GIFT  OF 

R S . KATE   CH ATJE-aARTZ 


*#^i  ■:-  *, '  1..,.  ■■;^ 


OFFTHOUGHTS 


ABOUT 


¥o)iEN  AND  Other  Things 


SAMUEL  EOCKAVELL  EEED, 

(  The  S.  R.  R.  of  the  Cincinnati  Commercial  Gazette.  ) 


CHICAGO,   NEW  YORK,    SAN  FRANCISCO: 

BELFORD,  CLARKE  &  CO. 

1888. 


COPYRIGHT, 

BELFORD,  CLARKE  &  CO. 


OONOHTTE  &  HENNEBKERT, 

Printers  and  Binders,  Cliicago. 


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CONTENTS, 


About  Markying  Rich,  .  .  . 

A  Lift  for  the  Down-trodden  Sex,     . 

An  Advanced  Female  Thinker, 

Blighted  Men,      .... 

Degeneracy  of  Knight  Templarhood, 

Early  History  of  the  Woman  Movement, 

Equal  Rights  op  the  Child, 

Evils  op  the  Higher  Education  of  jVIales, 

Fishing  and  Morals, 

How  AND  When  to  Die,  . 

Intellectual  Breeding, 

Is  Speech  a  Blessing?     .  . 

Is  Woman  Superficial? 

Is  Woman  a  Living  Lie? 

Labor-Saving  Machinery  an  Evil, 

Lessons  op  the  Flood,     . 

Love  and  Marriage, 

Love  and  Music, 

Marriage  and  the  Higher  Education  op  Women 

Rise  and  Fall  of  Woman's  Dress  Reform, 

Rules  to  Reform  Girls, 

Sacrilegious  Plays, 

Scientific — Spots  on  Domestic  Animals,    . 

Second  Love  in  the  Modern  Novel, 

The  Ancient  and  Honorable  Cat, 

The  Baby  and  the  Ballot, 

The  Case  Against  Woman — A  Rehearing, 

The  Case  of  Shylock — Law  Review, 

The  Chaperon  Question, 

iU 


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or-'-S  ./?^M 


IV 


COKTENTS. 


The  Chicago  Marriage  Disability, 

The  Children  of  the  Strong-Minded, 

The  Converted  Prize-Fighter, 

The  Deluge  op  1883, 

The  Devils  and  the  Swine — A  Lawsuit, 

The  Dog's  Day, 

The  Final  Chill, 

The  Married  Man's  Liabilities,     . 

The  Mother-in  Law, 

The  Real  Disability  of  Woman,     . 

The  Rights  op  Women  op  Society, 

The  Rise  and  Progress  op  Woman, 

The  Scandal-Mongers, 

The  Theatre, 

The  Time  to  j\L\rry, 

The  Trousers  Movement,    . 

Trl-vL  by  Jury  a  Defeat  of  Justice, 

Uneven  Growth  of  ^L\n  and  Wife, 

Wail  for  a  Hat, 

Was  the  Creation  a  Failure? 

What  to  Do, 

Why  Our  Women  Grow  Plump, 

Widowers, 

Will  the  Coming  Woman  Marry? 

Woman  and  Maternity, 

Woman's  Reversible  Polarity, 

Woman's  Superior  Intuitions, 

Woman's  Untruthfulness, 


I. 

LOVE  AND  MARRIAGE. 

LIGHT  come,  liglit  go,  is  an  old  adage.  Much  is  said 
^  about  too  easy  divorce,  and  nothing  about  too  easy  mar- 
riage. Yet  one  follows  the  other.  The  coupling  of  cattle 
is  much  more  guarded  than  that  of  the  human  race.  Peo- 
ple think  that  easy  marriage  promotes  morality,  or  they 
think  that  the  command  to  a  i^eculiar  family  to  increase  and 
multiply  overrides  all  safeguards  in  our  society,  when  the 
earth  needs  no  replenishing,  and  universal  deluges  have 
gone  out  of  fashion;  and  if  any  race  is  specially  cliosen  to 
populate  the  earth  it  is  not  ours,  and  the  greater  the  mul- 
tiplying the  harder  the  battle  of  life. 

Ministers  will  get  out  of  bed  Avith  the  alacrity  of  the 
boys  that  run  with  the  machine  to  marry  a  runaway  couple. 
Perhaps  next  Sunday  they  will  preach  on  the  national 
sin  of  easy  divorce,  and  wonder  why  it  does  not  fetch 
another  deluge.  Such  cases  are  always  announced  in  the 
public  journals  as  the  triumph  of  true  love  over  cruel  par- 
ents and  locksmiths.  The  girl  is  taught  that  love  is  a  di- 
vine sense  and  an  infallible  guide  which  she  should  follow, 
in  defiance  of  parents  and  all  prudential  considerations. 
The  parents  have  not  entirely  outgrown  the  same  nonsense. 
The  lover  thinks  his  passion  gives  him  a  sacred  riglit  to 
gratify  it,  although  he  tramples  upon  the  care  and  love  of 
parents  and  deludes  a  silly  girl  to  trust  her  life  to  his 
worthlessness. 

Even  the  mothers  disarm  their  prudence  in  a  great 
measure  by  making  the  marrying  of  their  daughters  in- 
dispensable.    In  this  they  will  take  great  risks  for  their 

6 


6  LOVE  AND   MARRIAGE. 

daughters.  Hardly  any  degree  of  dissipation  in  a  man  will 
prevent  his  getting  a  well-bred  girl  to  marry  him,  with  the 
mother's  consent,  if  he  has  mone}*.  She  will  tamper  with 
her  conscience  by  the  feeble-minded  plea  that  marriage  will 
reform  him.  And  romantic  girls  marry  hard-drinking 
rakes  to  reform  them.  But  hard-drinking  young  men  are 
apt  to  keep  on  the  road  that  makes  drunkards,  and  then, 
after  immeasurable  misery  in  the  family,  comes  a  petition 
for  relief  by  divorce. 

With  all  this  looseness  of  ideas  about  entering  into 
marriage  the  truth  must  be  admitted  that  in  our  imperfect 
society — in  which  one  sex  is  deprived  of  the  elective  fran- 
chise, which,  in  the  good  time  coming,  is  to  cure  all  social 
ills — marriage  is,  in  a  great  degree,  a  necessity  to  women, 
and  therefore  in  many  ways  they  have  to  take  great  risks. 
At  the  best,  man  is  a  risky  creature,  and  sometimes  woman. 
In  taking  the  chances  mistakes  are  unavoidable.  There- 
fore is  divorce  a  rational  provision  for  the  chances.  Com- 
paratively few  of  these  dreadful  realizations  are  ever  told. 
Neither  party  can  see  any  remedy,  and  so  they  grin  and 
bear  the  consciousness  of  their  mistake. 

If  the  heroic  pluck  with  which  men  and  women  bear 
in  silence  the  sense  of  the  mistake  they  made  in  marriage 
under  the  guidance  of  the  divine  and  infallible  instinct  of 
love  were  known,  an  idea  of  the  heroism  of  the  human 
race  would  be  had  surpassing  all  that  has  been  celebrated 
in  war,  pestilence  and  famine.  Each  heart  alone  can 
know  its  own  bitterness  and  the  pluck  of  its  own  endur- 
ance. After  marriage  people  see  that  what  they  thought 
a  divine  and  infallible  sense  of  love,  whose  dictates  must 
override  the  judgment  of  parents,  relatives,  and  all  calcu- 
lations of  prudence,  was  otherwise  than  spiritual,  and  as 
an  infallible  guide  was  a  delusion. 

Yet,  they  can  not  say  this,  for  it  would  put  the  fat  in 


LOVE   AND   MARRIAGE.  7 

the  fire.  They  heroically  make  the  best  of  it,  and  praise 
marriage,  and  advise  their  friends  to  go  into  it.  Happily, 
the  greater  number  of  marriages  are  tolerable.  But  the 
parties  find  out  that  when  they  popped  into  them,  as  it  is 
fitly  termed,  they  were  exalted  above  their  right  minds, 
and  were  quite  incaj^able  of  exercising  sober  judgment  in 
this  momentous  affair.  Yet,  they  would  not  have  taken 
anybody's  counsel;  neither  that  of  parents,  nor  of  mar- 
riage experience,  nor  of  the  constitutions  of  offspring, 
nor  of  livelihood,  nor  any  other. 

Let  any  man  make  affirmation,  supported  by  the  solemn 
ceremony  of  the  uplifted  hand,  or  the  kissing  of  the  book, 
or  the  beheading  of  a  cock,  the  breaking  of  a  saucer,  the 
burning  of  paper  with  sacred  words  written  thereon,  pros- 
trations to  the  sun,  or  any  other  form  by  which  men  bind 
themselves  to  speak  the  truth,  and  then  let  him  say,  with 
hand  on  his  viscera,  if,  when  he  popped  the  fatal  words 
which  plunged  him  into  marriage,  he  was  in  his  right 
mind.  If  the  parties  were  morally  irresponsible,  does  not 
what  is  called  marriage  for  love  make  a  case  for  divorce  on 
the  ground  of  emotional  insanity? 

That  love  is  brief  madness  is  a  maxim  as  old  as  the  hu- 
man race.  How  can  a  mad  man  and  a  mad  woman  be  com- 
petent to  enter  into  a  contract  which  is  to  rule  their  whole 
lives  and  to  fix  the  destiny  of  the  unborn?  Beyond  ques- 
tion the  parents,  even  with  all  the  weakness  of  tlie  mother 
for  getting  the  daughter  married,  are  vastly  more  compe- 
tent to  judge"  whether  the  marriage  is  a  judicious  one  than 
the  young  people.  This  is  the  way  they  do  in  France, 
where  households  are  admitted  to  be  models  of  affection 
and  harmony.  The  tendency  of  all  high  civilizations  is  to 
this  regulation. 

Under  the  influence  of  our  Declaration  of  Independence, 
and  of  our  star-spaugled-bannerism,  parental  control   is 


8  LOVE   AND   MARRIAGE, 

thrown  off  early  in  this  country,  and  in  particular  do  the 
young  people  revolt  at  the  idea  of  parental  control  or  coun- 
sel in  the  affairs  of  what  they  call  love.  But  while  the 
tendency  of  democratic  institutions  is  to  make  the  young 
ones  free  and  equal,  they  have  also  a  constant  tendency  to 
paternalism  in  the  shape  of  communism,  or  the  extension 
of  the  hand  of  government  into  the  regulation  of  all 
things  of  social  welfare. 

Marriage  is  a  concern  of  society,  which  has  to  furnish  the 
binding  and  the  loosing,  and  to  take  the  consequences  in 
the  burdens  thrown  on  it  by  bad  marriages,  and  by  parties 
becoming  worthless  after  marrying.  In  a  perfected  social 
state,  society  would  sujiervise  the  marriages,  and  a  com- 
mittee of  impartial  scientific  persons  would  judge  what 
males  and  females  are  physiologically  compatible,  and  thus 
would  plant  the  harmony  of  wedlock  on  a  scientific  basis. 
Of  course,  as  soon  as  it  had  crossed  the  threshold  of  science, 
it  would  have  risen  way  above  the  notion  that  love  is  a 
spiritual  sense,  or  that  compatibility  can  be  in  marriage 
otherwise  than  physiologically. 

This  would  make  marriage  as  certain  in  its  fitness,  com- 
patibility and  consequences  as  a  chemical  union  of  affini- 
tive properties.  An  inharmonious  marriage  would  be  im- 
possible save  by  the  slip  of  overlooking  some  latent  prop- 
erty in  one  or  the  other,  such  as  may  sometimes  defeat 
even  a  chemical  process,  or  the  prognostication  of  even  so 
exact  a  science  as  astrology.  But  with  the  ever  accumu- 
lating tests,  the  liability  to  make  a  mistake  would  be  re- 
duced to  a  mere  nominality.  While  this  would  banish 
divorce,  it  would  steadily  elevate  the  race,  which  under  the 
abandonment  of  physiological  laws  in  leaving  marriage  to 
chance,  is  degenerating  in  comparison  with  the  animals 
who  are  subjected  to  science. 

The  individual  is  no  more  able  to  rise  to  those  scientific 


1  LOVE   AND   MARRIAGE.  9 

principles  which  are  for  the  welfare  of  the  whole,  than  the 
weakling  is  able  to  see  the  beneficence  of  the  law  of  the 
elevation  of  the  race  by  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  Only 
society  as  a  whole  is  able  to  rise  to  the  height  of  the  prin- 
ciples which  govern  the  welfare  of  the  whole.  This  i)aper 
comes  out  at  the  jilace  where  it  went  in,  namely,  that  loose- 
ness in  entering  into  marriage,  requires  looseness  in  di- 
vorce. It  also  points  out  the  way  to  exterminate  divorce 
by  scientific  marriage.  But  all  great  truths  for  elevating 
the  human  race  have  had  to  be  promulgated  to  an  unbe- 
lieving world,  and  to  lie  dormant  for  centuries  before  they 
were  received.  This  is  a  lesson  to  the  prophets  to  be  mod- 
erate in  their  exj)ectations. 


11. 

THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  WOMAN. 

IF  WOMAN  would  take  a  retrospect  of  the  progress 
which  has  been  made  toward  her  emancipation,  she 
woukl  find  in  it  ground  for  her  ultimate  hopes,  although 
she  may  be  impatient  at  the  pace.  To  the  individual  this 
appears  slow,  but  in  the  work  of  material  creation  by  evo- 
lution a  thousand  million  years  are  but  as  a  day,  and  all 
scientists  agree  that  the  growth  of  morals  is  by  like  pro- 
cess of  evolution.  Woman  should  think  on  the  grand  pa- 
tience and  majestic  calmness  of  universal  evolution. 

The  scientist  gets  some  notion  of  this  grand  patience 
when  he  contemplates  the  work  of  creation  by  develop- 
ment, through  millions  of  years — even  through  millions  of 
years  before  reaching  that  stage  where  the  governing  ob- 
ject of  creation,  man  with  a  soul,  was  evolved.  Let  wo- 
man learn  by  thinking  on  the  grand  patience  which  is 
shown  in  awaiting  the  evolution  of  even  the  minor  cor- 
poreal changes,  as  laid  down  by  the  evolution  philosophers, 
which  allows  for  such  little  measures  of  development  as  a 
terraqueous  webfoot  from  a  picary  fin,  a  prehensile  tail 
from  a  tail  for  aquatic  propulsion,  the  final  extermination 
of  this  natural  and  graceful  termination  of  the  spinal  col- 
umn, the  extinction  of  the  hair  from  the  body  by  the  habit 
of  sitting  against  trees  and  of  lying  on  the  back,  as  Dar- 
win has  ably  described,  this  process  aided  by  sexual  selec- 
tion—i.  e.,  each  mating  with  the  most  depilated,  and  so  on 
for  any  other  change  of  form  in  the  course  of  development, 
a  period  of  time  so  long  that  all  fossil  remains  of  transitioil 
stages  have  been  obliterated  by  the  earth's  changes, 

10 


KISE   AND   PROGRESS   OF   WOMAN.  11 

If  woman  could  rightly  contemplate  the  work  of  that 
creation  of  which  she  is  so  essential  a  j)art,  and  could  dis- 
cern how  gradual  is  all  real  progress,  she  would  find  reason 
for  api^rehension  that  her  full  emancipation  may  come  be- 
fore she  can  be  adapted  to  it,  rather  than  for  impatience  at 
its  slowness.  The  study  of  science  teaches  philosophical 
patience  to  await  the  natural  working  of  the  eternal  forces;  , 
therefore  should  woman  be  admitted  to  our  colleges  of  'A^ 
science  that  she  may  calmly  await  her  future,  and  be  fitted 
therefor. 

For  example,  let  woman's  mind  measure  if  it  can  the 
immense  stage  achieved  toward  her  emancipation  when  in 
the  fullness  of  time  she  had  finally  gained  the  right  to  the 
sole  possession  of  one  man  in  marriage.  From  a  variable 
fraction  she  became  a  whole.  From  one  of  a  lot  of  com- 
peting slaves  she  rose  to  a  place  of  command. 

In  the  natural  state  man  has  a  herd  of  women.     In  any    "^ 
number  greater  than  one,  the  wives  are  the  humblest  slaves, 
each  rivaling  the  other  in  seeking  his  favor;  each  humbling 
herself  and  trampling  down  the  rest  in  soliciting  his  par- 
tiality; the  deepest  affections  and  passions  of  their  nature 
directed  to  their  mutual  degradation  before  him.     Woman, 
accustomed  to  her  present  kingdom,  can  not  conceive  the    ^ 
immensity  of  the  change  made  by  lifting  her  from  the 
slavish  state  of  polygamy,  and  giving  her  the  exclusive 
possession  of  a  whole  man  in  marriage,  and  placing  him  at 
her  mercy,  with  such  talents  as  woman  has  for  making  his 
life  hapi^y  or  wretched.     As  this  tremendous  lift  in  her 
state  was  achieved  without  the  voting  franchise,  the  think- 
ing woman  may  perceive  that  there  are  other  forces  in  op-  \ 
eration  for  her  elevation — moral  forces  which  have  made 
immensely  greater  advances  for  her  than  yet  remain  for  \ 
the  voting  franchise  to  do.     Is  not  this  retrospect  a  ground 
for  hopefulness?    And  does  it  not  suggest  that  the  suffrage 


12  RISE   AND   PROGRESS  OF   WOMAN. 

women  may  be  devoting  their  minds  so  entirely  to  one  thing 
■p\'  as  an  engine  for  woman's  advancement  as  to  neglect  others 
which  have  accomplished  such  great  things? 

And  lest  woman  should  think  progress  from  polygamy 
is  nothing  to  speak  of,  it  may  be  mentioned  that  in  terri- 
torial extent  and  numbers  polygamy  is  still  the  prevailing 
custom. 

The  various  customs  of  subjection  of  woman,  since 
polygamy,  have  been  a  part  of  the  common  law,  and  have 
had  technical  names  whose  sound  is  a  rattling  of  the  suc- 
cessive chains  from  which  she  has  been  delivered;  such  as 
the  marquette,  the  mundium,  the  morgengabe,  tlie  oscu- 
lum,  the  dowry,  the  jointure,  all  of  which  marked  various 
degrees  of  servitude  and  ownership.  The  marquette  gave 
to  the  lord  of  the  soil  the  first  possession  of  every  bride, 
unless  the  husband  ransomed  her.  The  mundium  was  the 
price  for  which  the  father  sold  and  transfered  the  daugh- 
ter. The  morgengabe  or  morning  gift  was  a  price  which 
the  husband,  next  morning,  on  certain  proofs,  paid  to  the 
new  wife.  The  osculum  was  a  gift  of  the  man  to  the  be- 
trothed for  the  first  kiss.  All  these  are  founded  on  the 
idea  of  purchase  and  sale  of  the  woman.  The  dowry  came 
after  great  progress  in  emancipation.  It  was  an  indemnitv 
which  the  father  of  the  bride  paid  the  husband  for  taking 
the  burden  of  her  support.  The  jointure  was  after  still 
further  progress;  it  paid  the  wife  a  sum  out  of  the  hus- 
band's estate.  The  same  idea  of  purchase  was  continued, 
but  this  greatly  contributed  to  the  wife's  independence. 
The  theory  of  ownership  is  still  continued  in  the  marriage 
ceremony,  in  the  form  of  giving  the  bride  away.  No  strong 
minded  woman  would  ever  submit  to  pass  under  the  yoke 
in  this  form  of  being  given  away,  if  she  knew  the  custom 
it  comes  from. 

These  mile  stones  mark  the  measure  of  such  vast  ad- 


RISE   AND   PROGRESS   OF   WOMAN.  13 

rancement  in  the  state  of  women  that  tlic  liunian  mind 
can  not  take  it  in.  Yet  there  are  impatient  women  who 
think  that  nothing  is  to  be  done  for  them,  and  that  notliing 
will  ever  be  done  until  they  get  the  ballot,  and  that  this 
will  do  all  things  for  them.  While  there  is  nothing  in  all 
this  history  to  discourage  their  aspirations  for  the  elective 
franchise,  there  is  a  lesson  that  other  moral  forces  are  a 
power  to  lift  them  up,  and  that  it  is  not  wise  to  neglect  them 
and  to  trust  all  their  salvation  to  the  ballot.  And  if  they 
observe  they  may  perceive  a  great  mass  of  men  Avho,  with 
the  ballot  in  their  hands,  say  that  government  has  only 
made  the  few  rich  and  the  mass  poor.  And  by  the  meas- 
ure of  the  past  she  may  hope  to  do  more  for  herself  than 
the  ballot  ever  can  do  for  man  or  woman. 

She  can  hardly  hope  to  equal  man  in  physical  strength; 
therefore  she  must  try  to  fetch  up  the  balance  by  excelling 
him  in  wit.  (Darwin,  in  reasoning  to  prove  the  impossibil- 
ity of  the  future  intellectual  equality  of  woman  with  man, 
says: 

"In  order  that  woman  should  reach  the  same  [intellect- 
-ual]  standard  as  man,  she  ought,  when  nearly  adult,  to  be 
trained  to  energy  and  perseverance,  and  to  have  her  reason 
and  imagination  exercised  to  the  highest  point;  and  then 
she  would  probably  transmit  these  qualities  chiefly  to  her 
adult  daughters.  The  whole  body  of  women,  however, 
could  not  be  thus  raised,  unless,  during  many  generations, 
the  women  who  excelled  in  the  above  robust  virtues  pro- 
duced offspring  in  larger  numbers  than  other  women — 
conditions  manifestly  incompatible  with  each  other." 

But  woman  may  take  him  on  his  own  premises,  and 
show  that  his  conclusion  does  not  follow;  for  it  is  not  by 
greater  fecundity  that  intellectual  men  rule  the  mass.  A 
few  minds  rule  the  multitude.  Therefore  does  his  require- 
ment offer  every  encouragement  to  women  who  desire  to 


14  RISE  AKD   PROGRESS   OF  WOMAN. 

lift  up  woman,  to  train  themselves  to  energy  and  perseve- 
rance, and  to  have  their  imagination  and  reason  exercised 
to  the  highest  point,  so  as  to  transmit  high  intellectual 
qualities  to  their  daughters.  This  seems  the  most  promis- 
ing force  that  can  now  be  brought  into  play.  The  fact  of 
the  transmission  of  intellectual  as  well  as  physical  qualities 
is  patent  to  all,  and  it  may  be  said  that  she  who  brings 
forth  a  daughter,  and  has  not  transmitted  to  her  intellect- 
ual powers  to  help  elevate  her  sex,  has  done  a  serious  fault. 
Besides,  intellect  impresses  the  race  in  other  ways  than 
through  offspring.  A  strong-minded  woman  influences 
other  women,  and  causes  them  to  transmit  to  their  daugh- 
ters stronger  minds.  The  immense  elevation  to  which 
woman  has  attained  can  not  have  been  without  the  work- 
ing of  adequate  moral  forces.  To  sujjpose  that  such  forces 
have  ceased  would  be  irrational.  The  progress  of  the  mil- 
lions of  years  of  the  past  is  proof  that  the  rate  of  progress 
will  be  continued  in  the  millions  of  years  to  come.  We 
can  not  contemplate  what  has  been  achieved  without  re- 
garding the  voting  franchise,  when  it  shall  come,  as  a  mere 
incident,  not  as  a  master  force.  Tnere  is  grand  cause  for 
woman's  hope  of  the  future;  there  is  also  assurance  for  the 
exercise  of  her  grand  patience. 


III. 

THE  TIME  TO  MABRT. 

A  SINCERE  young  woman  has  asked  an  oracular  deliver- 
ance from  that  ex-cathedra  infallibility  which  comes 
to  the  tips  of  the  thumb  and  fore-fingers  of  the  ready 
writer,  on  the  propriety  of  early  marriage.  The  inquiry 
does  not  define  an  early  marriage,  but  We  will  assume  that, 
in  the  common  notion  in  this  country,  marriage,  when  the 
female  is  eighteen  and  the  male  twenty-one,  is  called  early, 
and  that  the  inquirer's  early  quality  means  both  male  and 
female.  The  question  treats  marriage  from  the  material- 
istic standpoint — that  is,  it  discards  all  notion  of  fore- 
ordination,  such  as  is  commonly  expressed  by  the  saying 
that  marriages  are  made  in  heaven,  and  that  love  is  an  un- 
erring spiritual  instinct,  and  it  treats  marriage  as  subject 
to  prudential  considerations. 

If  this  be  the  true  view,  it  simplifies  the  question  in 
some  degree.  But  upon  this  the  views  of  the  young  un- 
married and  of  the  mature  married  are  directly  opposite; 
the  former  holding  to  the  notion  that  love  is  a  spiritual 
insight  and  must  not  be  opposed,  while  the  latter  are  con- 
vinced that  the  spiritual  insight  or  divine  instinct  of  love 
is  moonshine,  and  that  prudent  and  convenient  marriages 
are  a  far  better  assurance  of  happiness.  This  change 
which  comes  over  the  married  views  of  love  is  a  phenome- 
non which  philosophy  has  not  explained. 

Taking  the  materialistic  view,  an  important  question 
is,  what  is  the  object  of  the  marriage?  There  is  a  com- 
mon saying  that  early  marriage  is  the  best  safeguard  of 
virtue.     It  seems  to  be  the  same  as  to  say  that  satiety  is 

15 


16  THE  TIME  TO   MARKY. 

the  best  safeguard  of  the  appetite.  This  is  a  reason  to  be 
considered,  altliough  its  direct  personal  application  is  not 
often  made.  There  is  still  a  blind  notion  largely  prevalent 
that  marriage  is  a  duty  in  order  to  increase  and  multiply 
and  replenish  the  earth.  Early  marriage  gives  an  early 
start  in  this  business,  and  enables  the  multiplying  and 
replenishing  to  be  carried  further. 

But  this  notion  is  derived  from  the  injunction  laid  on 
Adam  when  the  earth  was  fresh,  and  on  Noah  when  the 
earth's  inhabitants  had  been  drowned,  and  upon  Abraham 
when  the  purpose  was  to  make  of  his  offspring  a  peculiar 
race,  which  should  be  an  example  of  God's  favor,  glorify 
Him,  and  drive  out  other  races.  The  need  to  increase  and 
multiply  numbers  in  the  earth  no  longer  exists.  Nor 
could  any  apply  this  duty  to  themselves  unless  they  were 
certain  that  they  should  bring  forth  peculiar  children, 
who  would  be  a  glory  to  God  and  a  benefit  to  their  species. 
They  cannot  make  a  virtue  of  their  appetites,  and  plead 
a  command  to  replenish  the  earth  when  they  only  think 
of  their  own  indulgence. 

There  are  already  too  many  people  in  the  world.  All 
human  ills  multiply  with  increase  of  population.  No 
reformer  in  ancient  or  modern  times  has  been  able  to  devise 
a  way  to  mitigate  the  ills  of  humanity  without  restraining 
the  increase  of  population.  Population,  says  the  great 
Malthus,  is  ever  pressing  on  subsistence,  because  popula- 
tion, if  unimpeded,  can  go  on  multiplying  always,  while 
the  product  of  the  land,  from  which  the  food  must  come, 
can  not  go  on  multiplying  forever.  Therefore,  all  the 
means  of  diminishing  population  which  civilization  sets 
going  are  means  to  diminish  the  pressure  of  all  on  the  food 
supply,  and  thereby  to  better  their  state. 

The  peopling  duty,  therefore,  may  be  set  out  of  the 
question  whether  marriages  should  be  early.     The  earlier 


THE   TIME   TO    MARRY.  17 

they  begin  the  more  they  add  to  the  pressure  of  i^opulation 
on  the  supply  of  food  and  tlie  more  they  add  to  human  ills. 
There  is  a  verbal  workiugup  of  the  godlike  act  of  begetting 
an  immortal  soul  to  an  everlastng  destiny,  but  this  is  much 
let  down  by  a  view  of  the  neglect  to  which  the  greater  part 
of  these  begotten  souls  are  left  and  the  generally  estimated 
chances  that  they  may  come  to  wish  they  had  not  been  be- 
gotten. With  regard  to  this,  all  will  agree  that  to  beget 
an  immortal  soul  is  to  take  the  responsibility  of  seeing 
that  it  is  not  left  to  perdition. 

Besides  the  general  pressure  of  population  on  subsis- 
tence, there  is  a  particular  pressure  on  the  parents'  means, 
and  a  very  particular  measure  of  the  standing  of  the  child- 
ren by  the  number  of  portions  into  which  the  father's  sub- 
stance is  to  be  cut  up.  With  the  poor  who  despair  of  lay- 
ing up  anything,  this  does  not  count,  and  therefore  the 
poor  increase  and  multiply  recklessly;  but  in  the  case  of 
those  that  have  something  to  cut  up,  the  number  of  shares 
is  a  vital  consideration,  and  the  fore-handed  pater  is 
measured  and  speculated  upon  long  before  he  begins  to 
think  of  casting  up  his  final  accounts. 

The  human  mind  can  hardly  divest  itself  wholly  of  the 
notion  of  a  peremptory  instinct  of  love,  which  disregards 
all  prudential  considerations.  The  skillful  mammas  of 
society  know  that  there  is  a  way  of  brewing  this  divine  in- 
stinct in  two  young  persons  of  opposite  sexes  as  methodically 
as  Mrs,  Glass's  directions  how  to  cook  a  "hare.  But  they 
still  keep  stored  away  in  a  corner  of  their  womanly  natures 
the  theory  that  love  is  an  unerring  predestination,  right  in 
the  face  of  their  successful  management  for  their  daughters. 
But  all  must  have  observed  that  the  daughters  of  rich 
men  are  exposed  earlier  and  oftener  to  the  demonstrations 
of  the  divine  instinct  of  love,  and  that  their  lovability  de- 
creases with  the  increase  of  number  in  the  family. 
2 


18  THE  TiMi:  TO   MARRY. 

This  is  so  universal  that  it  may  be  called  nature's  law, 
and  it  is  therefore  to  be  given  due  weight.  Each  one  that 
the  parent  adds  to  the  number  of  his  offspring  reduces  the 
social  attractions  of  all,  and  diminishes  to  the  daughters 
the  chances  that  the  divinely  ordained  instinct  of  love  will 
hit  the  mark.  Each  additional  daughter  also  multiplies 
the  anxieties  and  cares,  the  fears  and  hopes,  of  the  manag- 
ing mammas  of  society,  making  their  burden  too  heavy  to 
be  endured,  and  causing  them  even  to  look  upon  their  own 
species,  the  daughters  of  others,  as  enemies.  This  is  a 
thing  to  be  fearfully  thought  on  by  him  who  marries  early 
and  often. 

That  the  girl  who  is  caught  at  seventeen  or  eighteen  is 
more  tractable,  and  will  be  more  apt  to  adapt  herself  to 
man's  ways,  is  generally  assumed.  But  this  idea  assumes 
that  the  whole  duty  of  woman  is  to  adapt  herself  to  a 
man's  ways.  And  this  touches  a  thing  which  is  at  the 
very  bottom  of  the  questions  of  woman's  destiny  and 
sphere  and  equal  rights,  and  these  always  run  straight  to 
the  question  whether  woman  should  be  permitted  to  learn 
the  alphabet.  The  idea  of  catching  a  young  girl  is  to 
take  her  when  she  is  green  and  unlearned,  and  can  there- 
fore be  subdued  to  the  mere  reflection  of  the  man's  per- 
sonality— to  become  one  with  him,  and  he  that  one. 

If  woman  is  to  take  a  position  of  intellectual  equality 
and  of  equal  rights,  she  is  at  eighteen  too  young  to  have 
acquired  the  necessary  education,  or  to  have  formed  a  char- 
acter that  shall  not  be  sunk  in  his.  If  she  is  to  take  her 
character  from  him,  the  earlier  she  is  caught  and  the 
less  she  has  been  taught  the  better.  But  all  education 
of  women  is  contrary  to  the  ancient  idea  of  the  true  oiieness 
of  marriage.  The  alphabet  to  women  has  revolutionized 
marriage,  and  brought  in  a  new  dispensation.  In  this  the 
marriage  should  be  deferred  until  the  girl  has  acquired  an 


THE  TIME  TO   MARRY.  id 

eqiial  education  aiul  a  fixed  character,  and  thereby  a  ca- 
pacity for  knowing  and  maintaining  lier  rights. 

The  present  cry  for  the  eqnal  education  of  the  sexes 
sets  as'de  the  practicability  of  early  marriage,  as  well  as  the 
old-fashioned  idea  of  the  oneness  of  the  married  in  the  merg- 
ing of  herself  in  him  ;  for  the  men  who  get  anything 
that  can  be  called  an  education  have  to  pursue  it  mucli  be- 
yond the  age  whicli  in  women  would  be  called  young  for 
marrying.  Therefore  that  which  is  called  the  elevation  of 
woman  puts  that  which  by  the  old  standard  would  be  called 
early  marriage  out  of  the  question.  The  requirement  of 
equal  education  and  of  a  formed  character,  to  stand  up  for 
equal  rights  against  the  man,  elevates  the  age  for  early 
marriage  of  woman  to  at  least  thirty,  and,  perhaps  more 
properly,  to  thirty-five  or  forty.  We  observe  that  the  latter 
is  about  the  age  at  which  enlightened  women  come  to  know 
their  rights  and  wrongs. 

At  such  a  time  the  rightly  trained  woman  may  be  armed 
at  all  points  for  the  militant  state  of  marriage,  to  enter 
therein  without  laying  down  any  of  her  ideas  or  rights,  or 
merging  her  personality.  This  late  beginning  Avould  di- 
minish the  j)ace  of  the  ever-advancing  pressure  of  popula- 
tion upon  the  means  of  subsistence  to  a  degree  which  the 
great  Malthus  did  not  think  possible.  Therefore  the  al- 
phabet, which  seemed  the  fatal  tree  of  knowledge  to  wo- 
man, may  turn  out  to  be  the  redeemer  of  woman  and  of 
the  race.  Thus  we  may  safely  say  that  woman  should 
marry  as  early  as  she  is  qualified  to  take  her  part  in  the 
married  state,  but  that  the  elevation  of  woman  to  a  knowl- 
edge of  her  rights  has  made  it  necessary  to  advance  the 
age  which  may  be  called  early  nearly  a  score  of  years  be- 
yond that  of  the  ideas  of  the  time  when  marriage  was  held 
to  be  a  state  of  oneness. 


IS  SPEECH  A  BLESSING? 

IF  we  Judge  by  the  run  of  conversation,  can  we  say 
boidly  that  the  faculty  of  speech  makes  the  common  lot 
happier?  Is  not  social  converse  more  on  sad  topics  than 
cheerful?  Let  any  family  and  society  person  observe  for  a 
time  the  talk  in  the  family,  at  meal  times,  in  the  evening 
circle,  in  visiting,  and  in  the  confidences  of  the  conjugal 
curtain,  and  see  if  the  unpleasant  subjects  do  not  turn  the 
scale.  If  not,  then  he  or  she  will  have  cause  for  gratulation 
on  the  exceptional  brightness  of  her  lot  or  of  that  day. 

Our  universal  salutation  solecism,  "How  do  you  do?" 
is  an  inquiry  into  our  bodily  infirmities,  and  conveys  the 
idea  that  this  is  a  subject  of  constant  anxiety.  Thus  in 
our  very  hails,  do  we  plunge  into  an  unpleasant  subject, 
and,  as  with  the  moral,  so  with  the  physical,  a  diseased 
state  is  more  interesting  than  health.  If  one  has  no  ail- 
ments to  tell,  the  conversation  is  prematurely  ended. 
However  very  few  can  answer  with  a  clean  bill  of  health. 
Most  of  us  do  not  live  strict  physiological  lives.  Fortu- 
nate is  it  that  we  do  not  try  what  the  health  journals  pre- 
scribe as  correct  living.  We  are  beings  of  many  ailments 
in  our  talk. 

The  human  digestive  apparatus  is  a  complex  structure, 
and  seems  a  clumsy  arrangement  for  living.  The  state  of 
our  digestion  and  the  digestibility  of  the  victuals  set  before 
us  form  the  principal  subject  of  conversation  in  polite 
society  in  the  free  West,  although  in  Boston  it  is  bad 
manners  to  mention  digestion  in  company.  The  simple 
fact  that  the  universal  greeting  is  a  health  inquiry  has 

20 


IS  SPEECH   A   BLESSING  ?  21 

come  from  the  trouble  which  digestion  finds  by  waiting 
on  appetite.  The  Turkish  sahitation,  "How  are  your 
bowels?"  means  the  same,  but  goes  more  directly  to  the 
seat  of  the  matter.  It  shows  a  touch  of  nature  which 
makes  Turk  and  Christian  akin. 

In  general,  the  meeting  salutation  calls  forth  a  report 
of  present  and  past  ailments  as  detailed  as  if  to  a  very  pa- 
tient practicing  physician.  In  general,  this  confidence  is 
mutual,  and  each  feels  a  spirit  of  generous  emulation  in 
matching  her  neighbor's  maladies.  In  the  case  of  moth- 
ers, the  children's  disorders  have  precedence,  indeed  almost 
a  monopoly.  From  their  own  troubles  the  conversation 
enlarges  to  the  incidents  of  disease  and  death  among  their 
neighbors  and  relations  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  This  so- 
cial enjoyment  seems  as  paradoxical  as  the  old  lady's  obser- 
vation that  she  enjoyed  poor  health.  In  public  conveyances 
and  in  all  places  the  observing  lover  of  his  species  listens 
with  wonder  to  these  protracted  narrations  of  dismal  mal- 
adies for  mere  enjoyment. 

Conversation  on  the  moral  infirmities  of  our  neighbors 
is  no  less  paradoxical  in  its  pleasure  than  that  on  bodily 
diseases.  Moral  health  offei's  no  more  for  interesting  con- 
versation than  physical  health,  but  when  it  falls  into  moral 
diseases  it  becomes  interesting.  A  lapse  to  a  single  vice 
gives  more  animation  to  social  converse  than  the  practice 
of  all  the  virtues.  Thus  does  society  conversation  resem- 
ble the  displayed  headings  of  a  modern  newspaper,  in 
which  the  eye  sees  all  manner  of  crime  and  vice  and  ''sins 
found  out"  and  disasters,  while  virtue,  good  conduct,  law, 
order,  and  public  welfare  are  not  of  interest  enough  to  be 
mentioned  in  any  type. 

Is  not  the  family  circle,  when  the  suspension  of  labor 
makes  conversation  free,  more  often  a  time  for  unloading 
a  budget  of  unpleasant  things,  or  for  fighting  over  the 


22  IS  SPEECH   A   BLESSING  ? 

day's  battle  of  care,  than  for  enlivening  talk?  Is  not  the 
meal  time,  which  of  all  hours  ought  to  be  one  for  pleasant 
subjects,  more  likely  to  be  a  time  for  overhauling  some  do- 
mestic or  business  trouble,  or  for  giving  the  children  a 
talking  to,  than  a  time  for  pleasant  Avords  and  witty  con- 
ceits? Thus  does  conversation  make  continuous  theenjoy- 
ment  of  our  own  troubles,  and  extend  it  to  those  of  our 
neighbors.  Thus  is  our  conversational  pleasure  depressing, 
and  tending  to  fix  in  the  American  face  that  dismal  ex- 
pression which  has  become  the  national  type. 

Men  have  politics  in  addition  to  all  the  other  lugubrious 
influences.  This  is  the  absorbing  topic  in  all  their  social 
occasions,  and  there  is  reason  enough.  In  a  civil  war, 
when  relations  and  neighbors  are  being  pushed  by  clumsy 
generalship  into  wasteful  slaughter,  this  is  the  exclusive 
topic  of  our  conversation.  If  it  were  otherwise  we  should 
be  unnatural.  An  elective  government,  subject  to  revolu- 
tion by  vote  of  the  people  every  one,  two  and  fovir  years, 
is  a  chronic  civil  war.  It  has  the  same  motive  as  all  civil 
wars — the  contending  for  possession  of  power,  and  the 
same  fierce  passions,  although  one  fight  is  with  bullets,  the 
other  ballots.  It  keeps  government  in  the  same  state  of 
uncertainty  and  partial  anarchy.  Men  would  be  unnatural 
if  this  chronic  civil  strife  were  not  the  all-absorbing  sub- 
ject of  their  talk.  And  this  intense  subject  tends  to  give 
them  a  dismal  countenance. 

But  when  we  think  of  the  propensity  of  those  that 
have  not  the  weight  of  the  nation  on  their  heads  to  pre- 
fer unpleasant  topics  for  mere  conversation,  can  we  confi- 
dently say  that  speech  blesses  them? 

The  species  of  animals  who  have  not  that  which  to  us 
is  articulate  speech  appear  to  enjoy  society.  When  to- 
gether they  seem  contented,  and  even  happy.  They  are 
in  sympathy  by  some  occult  way,  and  have  simple  sounds 


IS   SPEECH    A    BLESSING  ?  23 

to  convey  what  is  necessary  to  tlie  common  wants.  But 
their  complacent  exprct  sion  shows  that  they  have  no  reflex 
thought  to  keep  former  troubles  ever  present  in  mind,  and 
they  have  not  the  speech  to  multiply  these  and  present 
troubles,  and  to  make  their  fellows  bear  them.  Also,  they 
are  exempt  from  that  dreadful  sultering  which  is  common 
in  our  society,  from  the  necessity  to  talk  without  having 
anything  to  say. 

If  they  had  this  peculiar  reflection  and  this  faculty  for 
enjoyment  of  conversation,  a  herd  of  cows  or  sheep  re- 
posing in  a  meadow  Avould  not  have  that  contented  and 
jjeaceful  aspect  which  they  now  bear.  And  with  the  bless- 
ing of  sjieech  to  multi^fly  and  diffuse  their  troubles,  their 
contenances,  by  a  process  of  sympathetic  evolution,  would 
develop  those  nerves  and  muscles  which  give  a  dismal  ex- 
pression to  the  human  face — faculties  which  are  now  ut- 
terly lacking  in  these  hajipy  species.  The  fatal  gift  of 
conversational  speech  is  upon  us,  and  has  commonly  been 
regarded  as  a  blessing.  But  many  errors  which  have  the 
dust  of  ages  are  now  critically  examined. 


Y. 

WHY  OUR  WOMEN  GROW  PLUMP. 

THE  development  of  the  American  society  female  from 
the  national  lean  type  to  embotqjoint  is  apparent  to 
all  mature  observers  of  this  interesting  species.  The  cause 
of  this  change,  and  its  effect  on  Avoman,  morally  and  intel- 
lectually, are  worthy  of  philosophical  inquiry.  Some  of 
those  "organs  of  disjointed  thinking"  —  as  the  good  Dr. 
Eush  described  the  newspapers  —  lightly  ascribe  the  cause 
to  growth  of  wealth  and  luxury;  but  this,  stripped  of 
euphemism,  conveys  indolence  and  eating,  and  suggests  by 
association  of  ideas  the  fattening  course  of  stall  feeding  and 
correlative  mental  sluggishness.  This  would  divest  plump- 
ness of  poetry.  And  there  is  seeming  contradiction  to  this 
inference  of  mental  inertness  in  the  incident  that  our 
women  have  entered  new  pursuits  of  culture,  particularly 
in  high  art,  such  as  carving  wood,  decorating  pottery, 
decorative  modeling,  the  Kensington  stitch,  painting  on 
dress  fabrics,  and  so  on. 

This  explanation  is  superficial;  yet  this  superficial 
development  of  the  American  female  must  have  mental 
and  moral  correlation.  If  to  shift  any  part  of  the  planet 
on  which  we  sojourn  would  vary  the  balance  of  the  spheres, 
this  increase  of  substance  in  our  women  must  affect  the 
social  balance.  The  harmony  of  the  processes  of  nature 
would  lead  investigation  along  the  theory  that  this  develop- 
ment is  the  working  of  a  variety  of  concurrent  elements, 
rather  than  a  variation  by  some  exceptional  cause.  Female 
fashion  has  changed.  Even  during  the  present  generation 
the  fashion  was  to  be  delicate.     Girls  ate  strange  substances 

34 


WHY  OUR  AVOMEN  GROW   PLUMP.  25 

to  make  them  pale  and  slender.  A  consumptive  form 
was  thought  interesting  in  girls,  as  it  was  in  young  preach- 
ers. Restraining  apparatus  was  used  to  prevent  growth  of 
the  waist.  The  model  figure  was  as  if  the  waist  were 
screwed  into  the  lower  body. 

The  fashion  is  now  changed.  Ministers  bear  the  signs 
of  good  living,  and  their  wives  are  they  that  grow  consump- 
tive. This  makes  preachers  still  more  interesting  to  the 
unmarried  females  of  the  flock.  Woman's  readiness  in 
rushing  into  this  fatal  breach  shames  the  notion  that  hers 
is  not  the  courageous  sex.  We  suppose  that  Bluebeard  was 
a  popular  man  in  small  tea  parties.  By  a  similar  paradox 
the  Suttee  is  liked  by  Hindoo  single  women.  Our  girls 
now  wish  to  be  plump,  and  they  eat  nourishing  things  in- 
stead of  slate  pencils.  The  fashion  of  dress  has  conformed 
to  this  growth  of  taste,  and  the  waist,  instead  of  seeming 
to  be  screwed  into  the  hips,  curves  gracefully  out  to  them, 
and  is  allowed  to  grow  to  its  due  proportion.  Fashion  is  a 
strong  mental  power,  and  subordinates  the  senses.  Its  in-  -^ 
fluence  on  the  female  mind  is  paramount.  Mr.  Joseph 
Cook  announces  the  existence  of  psychic  force,  or  will  pow- 
er, over  extraneous  physical  objects,  which  can  move  them 
without  contact.  With  psychic  force  why  may  not  woman 
swell  herself  to  such  form  as  she  desires,  if  slio  shall  put 
her  whole  mind  to  it,  and  not  rest  on  foreign  apjDliances? 
This  theory  of  a  psychic  developing  power  is  further  sup- 
ported by  the  opinion  of  scientific  men,  that  the  force  of 
pure  will,  uncompromised  by  reason,  is  stronger  in  woman 
than  man. 

There  are  other  great  causes.  To  suppose  that  the  tre- 
mendous progress  in  woman's  condition,  which  has  lifted 
her  from  a  slave,  a  chattel,  one  of  a  herd  of  wives  of  a  bo- 
vine lord,  all  of  whom  were  slaves,  to  the  place  of  head  of 
the  household,  and  the  sole  possession  of  a  man,  has  taken 


26  WHY    OLR    WOMEN    GllOW    PLUMP. 

place  without  any  correlative  cluinge  in  lier  jiliysical  and 
moral  being,  would  be  unscientific.  Let  us,  lilie  Joseph 
Co(5k,  be  always  scientific.  Woman  is  better  loved  and 
cherished  by  man;  would  she  not  be  unnatural  if  she  did 
not  fatten  on  this?  Even  in  cattle  breeding  those  that  do 
not  respond  to  better  keeping  by  improved  condition  are 
set  down  as  of  a  bad  breed.  With  the  growth  of  luxurious 
civilization  the  labors  of  the  household  are  transferred  to 
helpers  of  a  hardier  class. 

While  the  battle  of  life  has  grown  fiercer  to  tiie  man 
her  part  has  grown  easier.  Good  feeding,  and  the  change 
of  fashion  which  allows  society  women  to  eat  their  fill  in- 
stead of  disclaiming  appetite  before  company,  have  borne 
a  part  in  this  development.  The  fashionable  woman  is 
now  a  good  feeder,  and  makes  eating  the  great  feature  of 
society  parties.  Also,  with  higher  civilization,  child-bearing 
is  restricted.  To  increase  and  multiply  and  replenish  the 
earth  is  not  now  the  chief  end  of  the  wife;  she  thinks  more 
of  replenishing  herself.  Her  substance,  instead  of  being 
divided,  goes  all  to  her  own  nourishment.  The  cares  of 
training  children  are  also  less,  and  so  in  many  ways  tlie 
chang  in  woman's  state  tends  to  that  which  promotes 
rotundity.  But  of  all  the  fattening  causes  which  have 
come  in  with  her  elevation,  jDcrhaps  the  greatest  is  the 
high  consequence  to  which  she  has  risen  in  society,  in  the 
conjugal  state  and  in  the  household. 

The  lifting  of  the  wife  from  the  condition  of  a  drudge 
and  slave,  in  which  she  is  held  in  all  the  lower  civilizations, 
to  a  place  of  reverence,  worship  and  command,  could  not 
be  without  corresponding  change  in  her  habit.  The  in- 
ferior stature  of  the  women  of  barbarous  tribes  is  marked. 
The  American  Indian  is  of  a  lordly  size  and  form;  the 
squaw  is  small.  With  the  development  of  civilization 
woman  develops.     In  our  high  civilization  she  is  queen 


WHY   OUR  WOMEN   GROW   PLUMP.  27 

of  the  family  circle  and  a  queen  in  society.  Man  submits 
to  her  sway.  Inexperienced  men  have  a  fancy  of  what 
they  call  beginning  right  with  a  wife;  but  in  the  first 
stage  of  wedded  life  man  is  in  the  soft  state,  Avhile  woman's 
presence  of  mind  never  deserts  her,  and  thus  is  her  autho- 
rity established. 

The  habit  of  rule  is  the  full  habit.  Authority  gives  a 
swelling  port.  Power  has  in  all  ages  been  associated  in 
idea  with  size.  A  well  known  little  Congressman  is 
credited  with  saying  that  if  he  were  six  inches  taller  he 
would  be  President.  In  all  countries  the  lords  are  the 
larger  class,  the  peasants  the  lesser.  The  form  swells 
when  giving  orders.  High  rank  has  a  high  strut.  The 
sense  of  governing  great  nations  and  commanding  great 
armies  swells  the  man.  Who  thinks  of  empress,  queen, 
or  duchess  as  a  lean  person?  When  Israel,  like  Henry 
Ward  Beecher,  wanted  a  king,  and  had  no  royal  family, 
Saul's  fitness  was  recognized  because  he  was  a  head  and 
shoulders  taller  than  the  multitude.  To  suppose  that 
woman  has  been  lifted  from  the  slave  drudge  to  a  place  of 
such  influence  and  sway  as  she  exercises  in  our  civiliza- 
tion, without  responding  to  it  by  a  higher  bodily  develoj)- 
ment,  is  to  set  her  down  as  an  exception  to  all  nature  and 
as  absolutely  unimprovable. 

Thus  has  this  elevation  of  woman's  state  raised  her  in 
bodily  condition,  and  her  increasing  consequence  expanded 
her  in  size.  This  e7nhonpoint  is  the  natural  Avorking  of 
her  assumption  of  that  rule  which  comes  so  naturally  tliat 
we  have  to  conclude  that  for  this  was  she  formed  by  nature. 
Nor  are  the  fashionable  female  fine  arts  so  great  an  intellec- 
tual strain  as  to  resist  this  plumping  tendency;  on  the  con- 
trary, they  are  rather  a  substitution  for  intellectual  labor. 
There  seems  to  be  little  on  woman's  side  to  set  off  against 
the  increasing  strain  of  mental  activity  on  the  i)rofessional 


28  WHY   OUR  WOMEN  GROW   PLUMP. 

man,  the  man  of  trade,  and  the  man  who  has  to  keep  his 
head  above  water  in  political  pursuits.  Even  the  writer  on 
that  organ  of  disjointed  thinking,  the  daily  paper,  may  have 
more  mental  wear. 

While  woman  has  expanded  in  form  by  this  rise  in  sta- 
tion, has  it  made  her  more  moral,  contented  and  amiable? 
Were  this  not  the  case,  still  her  increase  in  flesh  would  be 
no  failure.  Aspiration  to  a  higher  state  is  not  content- 
ment. Desire  for  authority  grows  with  exercise.  The 
appetite  for  homage,  is  never  satiated.  We  cease  not  to 
pursue  knowledge  because  the  higher  we  go  the  more  we 
find  life  not  worth  living.  Ease  is  associated  with  a  lower 
scale  of  being;  activity  with  the  higher.  Discontent  is  the 
engine  of  progress.  If  any  stage  of  elevation  brought 
satisfaction,  that  would  be  the  turning  point  todegeneracy. 
Our  first  mother  acquired  a  large  stock  of  knowledge — not 
by  the  hard  way  of  the  boarding-school,  but  by  the  short 
method  of  eating  an  apple;  yet  it  brought  not  contentment. 
This  world  is  a  probation,  and  therefore  a  Avorld  of  trouble. 
Far  better  than  things  comfortable  and  amiable  here  is  it 
that  man  shall  be  continually  prodded  to  long  for  another 
and  a  better  world. 

To  suppose  that  expansion  in  flesh  makes  woman  more 
amiable  is  to  suppose  that  it  dulls  intellect  and  sensibility- 
A  treatise  upon  woman  hath  always  the  limitation  that  it 
must  receive  no  theory  that  does  not  compliment  her; 
therefore  it  must  reject  this  supposition.  Scientific  per- 
sons are  of  the  opinion  that  although  this  increased  thick- 
ness of  the  flesh  part  of  her  structure  may  be  attended 
Avith  diminished  activity  of  intellect,  and  with  less  of 
deep  and  strong  and  lasting  feeling,  yet  that  the  greater 
superficies  brings  compensation  by  a  corresponding  in- 
crease in  the  number  and  readiness  of  the  superficial  and 
transitory  sensations  and  emotions.    This,  if  true,  would 


WHY   OUR   WOMEN   GROW   PLUMP.  29 

argue  that  fatness  brings  the  opposite  of  a  domestic  atmos- 
phere of  repose.  But  all  that  calls  itself  science  has  to 
change  ground  so  often  that  not  all  its  pronouncements 
can  be  accepted  as  finalities. 

Emhon2)oint  (this  word  sounds  better  than  corpulence) 
diminishes  activity  of  movement,  but  it  has  compensating 
advantages  in  making  the  slender  fly  to  anticipate  the 
wants  of  the  stout.  For  the  lean  to  serve  the  fat  seems 
the  order  of  nature,  although  it  reverses  the  order  of  the 
lean  and  fat  kine  of  Pharaoh's  dream.  Corpulence  is  better 
than  wages  in  bringing  service.  The  fat  one  has  the  lean 
at  her  beck,  and  grows  greater  by  these  advantages. 
Weight  of  body  is  generally  accepted  as  carrying  moral 
weight.  The  change  of  the  American  female  from  lean-  1 
ness  to  a  generousness  in  flesh  has  come  with  her  rise  from 
a  low  estate,  and  her  greater  bodily  development  is  a  monu- 
ment more  durable  than  brass  to  the  civilization  which  has  | 
given  her  this  swelling  elevation.  J 


YI. 

AN  ADVANCED  FEMALE  THINKER. 

WHEN  an  advanced  female  thinker  on  the  elevation  of 
woman  essays  an  essay  on  the  question,  "What  Shall 
We  Do  With  Our  Girls?"  she  invariably  lays  down  that  which 
is  equivalent  to  a  condition  that  they  shall  be  altered  into 
boys.  She  proceeds  to  prescribe  a  way  of  life  for  them  as 
if  they  were  boys,  and  as  if  sex  were  a  mere  external  varia- 
tion, having  no  difference  of  nature  or  destiny.  The  same 
condition  may  be  seen  in  all  those  advanced  female  think- 
ers who  demand  the  abolishment  of  all  distinctions  of  sex 
in  our  political  institutions;  they  proceed  as  if  there  were 
no  differences  of  sex  save  those  made  by  law.  Yet  there 
runs  through  all  this  the  paradox  of  an  assumption  of  a 
superior  sj)iritual  and  moral  nature  by  reason  of  her  being 
female. 

The  ideal  of  the  advanced  thinkers  of  woman's  eleva- 
tion is  a  man;  to  vote  and  hold  office  as  a  man;  to  enter 
man's  professions  and  business;  to  be  as  free  to  come  and 
go  as  a  man;  to  wear  mans  clothes,  and  be  in  all  things 
as  a  man,  with  a  mental  reservation  that  in  all  thq^e 
things — in  office  seeking,  in  the  professions,  in  trade,  in 
employment,  and  in  all  affairs — they  are  to  be  deferred  to 
and  preferred  because  they  are  female. 

The  same  fundamental  demand  for  a  creative  recon- 
struction governs  a  platform  orator  who  hails  from  Chi- 
cago, in  her  lecture  on  her  question,  ''What  Shall  AYe  Do 
With  Our  Daughters?"  Her  answer  is  a  prescription  that 
every  girl  shall  acquire  one  productive  art  or  profession  by 
which  she  could  earn  her  own  living.     How  simple  and 

30 


AINT  ADVANCED  FEMALE  THINKER.  3l 

easy!  IIow  advanced  thinking  soars  above  real  conditions! 
Productive  arts — arts  and  professions  which  will  furnish 
any  one  a  livelihood  grow  on  bushes  as  jjlenty  as  blackber- 
ries. The  girl  has  only  to  go  out  picnicking  and  take 
her  pick  of  them.  And  she  can  lay  it  away  for  future  con- 
venience or  necessity  as  she  does  her  accomplishment  of 
some  ineffectual  lessons  in  singino-  or  on  the  piano,  or  her 
worsted  work  or  her  doll. 

Althougli  the  advanced  thinker's  condition  requires  that 
the  girl  shall  be  made  a  boy,  and  in  politics  that  woman 
shall  be  man,  yet  the  girl  is  to  do  with  ease  what  the  boy 
finds  impossible,  and  M-oman  is  to  do  in  politics  what  men 
have  failed  to  do.  A  boy  that  becomes  an  artisan  has  to 
give  from  four  to  six  years  of  his  youth  to  learning  the 
trade  by  working  at  it.  The  boy  that  acquires  a  profession 
has  to  devote  all  his  youth  to  general  education  and  special 
study  for  it,  and  then  he  has  to  begin  the  battle  of  life  to 
gain  a  standing  in  the  profession,  with  the  prospect  of 
years  of  hard  pursuit  before  he  can  be  assured  of  a  liveli- 
hood. Everywhere  the  boy  finds  the  professions  and  trades 
apparently  full.  Indeed,  the  boy  who  wants  to  become  an 
artisan  finds  the  door  shut  by  the  workmen  against  his 
learning  the  trade. 

The  application  requisite  to  acquire  a  trade  or  profes- 
sion, and  to  get  a  start  in  it,  is  so  great,  that  the  greater 
number  of  boys  lack  energy  and  courage  enough  to  make 
the  attempt,  and  so  they  drop  into  some  unskilled  and 
precarious  emj)loyment,  where  they  have  little  chance  to 
rise.  To  boys  and  men  there  is  the  incentive  if  they  get 
a  trade  or  profession  it  is  a  thing  which  they  are  to  pursue 
through  life;  yet  this  woman  elevator,  who  is  rated  one  of 
the  most  brilliant  of  her  kind,  prescribes  that  girls  shall 
all  acquire  trades  or  professions,  which  none  of  them  expect 
to  practice  for  a  livelihood  for  life.     Boys  and  men  find  it 


32  AK  ADVANCED  FEMALE  THINKEE. 

hard  to  get  into  a  trade  or  profession,  and  that  in  order  to 
keep  in  they  must  stick  to  them  and  work  hard  at  them; 
but  this  advanced  female  thinker  prescribes  that  every  girl 
shfJl  acquire  a  productive  art  or  profession,  as  if  arts  and 
professions  whereby  any  one  can  be  productive  were  lying 
around  loose,  and  each  could  pick  up  one  or  more,  and  lay 
it  away  with  her  trinkets. 

In  the  order  of  nature  so  many  girls  marry  that  it  is 
natural  that  all  should  look  to  this  destiny.  If  qualified  to 
manage  a  household,  and  to  administer  it  with  intelligent 
economy,  according  to  the  means,  they  have  a  noble  pro- 
fession, andareas  much  productive  as  men.  Some  do  not 
marry,  but  in  an  intelligent  order  of  things  the  exception 
does  not  rule.  In  the  increasing  pressure  of  population 
upon  the  means  of  subsistence,  the  number  of  women  who 
have  to  get  a  living  by  other  occupations  than  running  a 
household  is  increasing.  Would  the  chances  of  these  be 
improved  if  all  girls  were  put  into  the  productive  arts  and 
professions,  to  acquire  them  for  the  name  of  the  thing, 
while  able  to  live  without  them?  Would  this  be  a  mercy  to 
such  girls  as  have  to  work  or  starve?  Would  it  not  be  as 
kind  to  real  workwomen  as  the  familiar  prescription  that 
every  woman  should  make  her  own  clothes,  and  so  make 
the  country  rich  ? 

Boys  and  men  find  the  trades  and  professions  seem- 
ingly full,  and  all  kinds  of  trading  apparently  overdone, 
and  men  mutually  depressing  their  own  condition  by  com- 
peting with  each  other.  Which  is  the  better  for  man  and 
woman,  that  she  should  come  in  to  double  this  degrading 
competition,  and  double  the  crowding  which  breaks  down 
his  wages,  and  so  get  for  the  two  no  more  than  he  alone 
would  earn,  or  that  he  should  make  the  best  place  he  can 
for  himself,  whether  in  unskilled  work,  in  the  artisan's 
trade,  in  business,  in  a  profession,  and  be  the  breadwinner, 


AN  ADVANCED  FEMALE  THINKER.  33 

while  she  makes  the  home,  and  is  the  economical  adminis- 
trator of  his  earnings?  Is  it  not  a  fortunate  thing  for 
woman  that  her  destiny  is  governed  by  a  natural  law, 
which  makes  man  and  woman  each  other's  helj)meet,  and 
not  by  the  notions  of  tlie  advanced  female  thinkers, 
which  would  put  them  into  a  mutual  competition  whick 
would  be  mutual  degradation. 


VII. 

THE  MOTHER-IN-LAW. 

THE  girl  looks  to  marriage  as  the  chief  end.  When 
she  marries  and  a  daughter  is  born  unto  her,  the 
chief  end  of  her  existence  is  to  get  her  daughter  well  mar- 
ried. As  soon  as  maternal  assiduity  and  skill  have  achieved 
this  object  she  becomes  the  mother-in-law,  who  is  a  sub- 
ject for  the  jibes  of  the  circus  clown;  for  the  elaborate 
jokes  of  the  minstrel  end-men;  for  the  witty  newspaper 
paragraphers,  and  a  never-failing  witticism  for  that  suc- 
cessful class  of  humorists  who  keep  in  the  safe  line  of  the 
old  jokes.  Tlius  does  woman  achieve  the  sujn-eme  object 
of  her  existence  in  becoming  an  object  of  poj)ular  oppro- 
brium. 

Not  all  the  wrongs  of  woman  are  in  her  exclusion  from 
the  voting  power,  and  from  equal  rights  in  the  property 
made  by  the  firm  of  man  and  wife;  yet  noone  can  tell  how 
far  this  disability  reaches.  All  sorts  of  people  that  have 
votes  are  treated  with  distinguished  consideration.  Per- 
haps if  mothers-in-law,  actual  and  prosj)ective,  had  votes, 
they  would  cease  to  be  the  jibes  of  newspapers  and  of 
society  wits.  The  only  point  of  this  stale  witticism  is  the 
assumed  irrepressible  conflict  between  the  man  and  his 
mother-in-law;  yet  his  courting  stage  seemed  to  be  so 
large-hearted  as  to  take  in  the  mother  in  particular,  and 
the  family  in  general.  Did  he  play  the  hypocrite,  and 
stoop  to  conquer  the  mother  only  to  betray? 

Why  should  marriage  cause  this  revulsion?  When  he 
and  the  daughter  become  one  flesh,  why  should  he  turn 
against  the  same  flesh  in  their  mother?    In  general  the 

34 


THE   MOTHER-IN-LAW.  35 

daughter  takes  after  the  mother;  can  he  love  the  one  and 
not  love  the  other?  Wlicn  the  parents  arc  rightly  mated, 
and  the  wife  has  tliat  suiiremacy  of  spirit  Avhicli  Eve  had 
over  Adam,  and  which  is  the  natural  order,  and  when  the 
stars  are  in  favorable  conjunction  at  her  birth,  and  when 
the  daughter  is  brought  up  at  home,  in  the  excellent 
French  fashion,  she  becomes  a  copy  of  the  mother.  IIow 
can  man  be  the  natural  enemy  of  the  mother,  if  he  loves 
her  likeness  in  the  daughter?  Something  more  than 
natural  is  in  this,  and  philosophy  ought  to  find  it  out. 

Is  it  that  experience  has  found  the  daughter  not  what 
the  heated  fancy  painted,  and  that  her  mother  is  an  excess 
of  the  same?  Yet  to  visit  upon  the  mother  his  excessive 
satisfaction  wj^h  the  daughter  is  not  brave.  A  common 
theory  is  that  he  is  Jealous  of  the  mother's  influence;  but 
this  is  a  revulsion  from  what  he  felt  when  he  married,  for 
the  object  of  his  love  had  received  all  her  loveliness  under 
the  mother's  influence.  To  suppose  that  he  is  Jealous  of 
the  mother's  love  because  he  Avants  to  pervade  the  daugh- 
ter's whole  being,  seems  absurd,  because  the  mother  is  so 
devoted  to  the  daughter's  happiness  that  he  can  possess  the 
hearts  of  both  by  civil  treatment. 

That  the  mother  is  severely  mindful  of  ill-treatment  or 
neglect  of  her  daughter,  is  true  and  natural  and  lovely. 
A  true  man  would  love  her  for  this  solicitude.  Also,  it  is 
true  that  her  less  partial  mind  judges  with 'more  severity 
his  unkindness  to  the  daughter,  and  is  more  critical 
toward  his  other  reasons  for  being  out  of  nights,  and 
toward  his  female  friendships,  than  the  credulous  and 
subdued  wife;  but  should  not  a  manly,  though  erring  man, 
have  conscience  enough  to  respect  the  mother  for  this 
solicitude  for  the  happiness  of  the  wife  of  his  bosom? 

Thus  the  supposition  of  a  natural  enmity  between  man 
and  mother-in-law,  and  the  theories  to  account  for  it. 


36  THE    MOTHER-IN-LAW. 

when  critically  examined,  reflect  on  the  man,  and  praise 
the  mother-in-law.  On  the  other  hand,  her  positive  vir- 
tues are  without  end.  She  is  a  slave  to  her  daughter's 
welfare.  What  can  be  so  unselfish  as  a  mother's  devotion 
to  her  daughter,  whose  whole  being  is  given  to  another? 
She  makes  all  the  family  cares  of  her  son-in-law  her  own. 
His  frequent  babes  become  the  chief  object  of  her  exist- 
ence, and  the  ailments  of  tlieir  insides  and  outs'des  the 
topic  of  her  conversation.  She  carries  their  little  bowels 
in  mind  wherever  she  goes.  Those  small  stomachs, 
which  are  either  crying  for  more,  or  are  disjmting  the 
measure  of  what  they  have  received,  are  to  her  an  object 
of  constant  solicitude. 

The  household  which  possesses  a  mothgr-in-law  has  a 
well-spring  of  joy.  Its  offspring  has  a  guardian  angel. 
She  is  severe  only  to  the  man's  positive  faults,  and  even  to 
these  she  is  over  kind.  Yet,  this  most  unselfish  being  is  a 
byword  in  our  speech.  Something  is  radically  wrong  in 
our  marriage  relation,  or  this  unnatural  antagonism  could 
not  be.  It  is  unchristian;  for  a  miracle  was  wrought,  by 
the  very  head  of  the  Christian  Church,  to  heal  Simon 
Peter's  mother-in-law  of  ''a  great  fever."  Yet,  so  hard- 
hearted is  our  custom  of  jeering  at  the  mother-in-law,  that 
it  holds  any  riddance  a  thing  for  merriment.  If  such  a 
sentiment  had  then  existed,  how  easy  for  Peter  to  have 
concealed  his  mother-in-law's  illness,  and  saved  the  chance 
of  riddance  by  the  benign  fever? 

Nor  was  the  mother-in-law  such  a  term  of  contumely  in 
the  old  dispensation.  Next  to  Eve — who  must  be  esteemed 
the  loveliest  of  her  sex,  and  immeasurably  above  any  other 
woman,  because  her  desire  for  knowledge  expanded  a  fenced 
garden  to  a  world,  and  the  stagnant  and  useless  existence 
of  a  pair  to  the  grand  passions  and  humanities  of  mankind 
—the  most  admirable  woman  in  Scripture  is  Naomi,  the 


THE   MOTHER-IN-LAAV.  37 

mother-in-law.  This  relation  was  witli  her  son's  wife, 
which  is  thought  to  have  even  more  jealous  elements.  For 
it  is  an  amiable  trait  of  women  to  be  more  severe  to  one 
another  than  to  man.  How  touching  the  pathos  of  this 
bereaved  Avoman's  farewell,  and  how  lovely  the  virtues 
which  made  her  daughter-in-law  cleave  unto  her,  and  re- 
solve to  follow  her  to  a  strange  country,  to  seek  their  for- 
tunes together! 

Was  ever  mother  more  tender  than  this  mother-in- 
law?  Did  ever  mother,  in  behalf  of  her  OAvn  daughter, 
exercise  in  a  finer  degree  that  which  to  her  is  the  ait  of 
arts — the  art  of  match-makiug — than  this  admirable  moth- 
er-in-law in  advising  Ruth  how  to  ca2itivate  the  rich  Boaz? 
What  chance  had  an  advanced  bachelor  to  escajie,  when  a 
young  widow,  instructed  by  a  veteran  Avidow,  Avas  spreading 
her  wiles  about  him?  Said  this  loA^ely  mother-in-law, 
when  she  discerned  that  the  night  of  the  harvest-home 
merry-making,  when  his  heart  Avoultl  be  warmed  by  the 
convivialities,  was  the  ripe  time  to  push  this  love  affair  to 
the  issue:  '^My  daughter,  shall  I  not  seek  rest  for  thee, 
that  it  maybe  Avell  with  thee?" 

The  narroAv-minded,  Avho  measure  the  proprieties  for 
the  times  Avhen  all  was  innocent,  by  the  conventionalities 
of  our  sophisticated  society,  may  scent  an  impropriety  in 
this  mother-in-laAv's  counsel  to  Ruth  to  seek  the  midniglit 
interview  in  the  threshing  floor;  but  to  the  innocent  all 
things  are  innocent.  Success  crowned  the  plan  which  she 
counseled,  and  speedy  marriage  condoned  the  impropriety, 
if  any  was.  With  what  womanly  intuition  did  this  Avisc 
mother-in-law  say  next  morning:  "  Sit  still,  my  daughtei-, 
until  thou  know  how  the  matter  will  fall;  for  the  man  Avill 
not  be  in  rest  until  he  have  finished  the  thing  this  day.  " 
And  so  it  fell  out. 

And  Boaz  took  Naomi  to  his  house,  Avhere  she  was  in 


f>^;'i  /la/i 


38  THE  MOTIIER-IN-LAW. 

happy  relation  of  mother-in-law  to  both  man  and  wife. 
And  a  blessing  followed  her.  The  neighbor  women  did 
not  fling  up  to  Boaz  that  he  had  caught  a  mother-in-law, 
but  they  all  praised  her  for  what  she  had  done.  Her  days 
as  mother-in-law  were  happier  than  her  days  as  wife  and 
mother,  and  she  became  nurse,  doctor  and  guardian  angel 
to  all  the  little  Boazes.  Thus  are  the  virtues  of  a  mother- 
in-law  the  theme  of  one  of  the  most  entertaining  books  of 
Scripture,  and  she  is  the  heroine  of  the  most  charming 
tale  of  domestic  life  in  all  literature. 


YIII. 
SECOND  LOVE  IN  THE  MODERN  NOVEL. 

A  NOTABLE  difference  in  the  modern  novel  from  the 
more  romantic  novel  of  the  last  century  is  in  its 
allowance  of  a  second  true  love.  The  impression  of  love  that 
is  left  on  the  youthful  mind  by  the  former  novels  is  that  it 
is  taken  once  for  all;  is  a  thing  to  live  for,  do  heroics  for, 
die  for,  to  be  blighted  for,  and  which  would  be  profaned 
bv  the  thought  of  doing  it  again. 

But  the  modern  novel  has  made  a  concession  to  the 
'^weakness  of  the  flesh" — as  Paul,  the  Apostle,  and 
Touchstone,  the  Shakspeare  philosopher,  alike  charac- 
terize marriage — it  has  come  down  to  the  realism  of 
society.  The  great  Thackeray  and  Dickens,  Trollope,  How- 
ells,  not  to  further  increase  the  list,  have  given  to  heroes  and 
heroines  second  loves  having  the  transports  of  the  first, 
thus  knocking  out  the  romantic  ideas  of  one  divinely 
directed  love,  which,  when  it  falls,  all  the  King's  horses 
and  all  the  King's  men  can  not  set  up  again. 

Still  more  shocking  to  the  ancient  romance,  they  have 
made  the  second  love  a  compensation  for  the  mistakes  of 
the  first;  thus  allowing  that  the  first  transporting  love 
may  be  a  delusion,  under  which  they  marry  blindly,  to  get 
their  eyes  open  in  time  like  young  pupjiies. 

If  the  novel  ought  to  portray  society,  this  is  progress  in 
the  art  of  novel  writing.  For  observation  is  that  second 
love  seems  possible  and  pleasant,  and  that  in  many  cases  it 
appears  more  satisfying  than  the  first,  and  that  in  many 
others  the  chances  are  that  it  might  be  so,  if  the  first 
were  off. 

89 


40  SECOND    LOVE   IN    THE    MODERN    NOVEL. 

And  altliougli  the  modern  novel  holds  to  the  ancient 
and  regular  idea  that  the  loss  of  a  lover  leaves  a  blighted 
being,  yet  neither  the  old  nor  the  new  novel  makes  such  a 
loss  of  a  married  lover  a  blight.  Philosophers  and  scien- 
tists have  given  much  speculation  to  this  curiosity  of  hu- 
man nature  without  reaching  a  solution.  Confucius,  Bud- 
dha, Socrates  and  Plato  were  alike  unable  to  solve  the  grout 
question:  "  Why  is  marriage  preventive  of  the  breaking 
of  the  heart  for  love?  " 

But  has  not  the  novel  a  higher  purpose  than  merely  to 
portray  society  ?  Should  it  not  mind  the  injunction  of  the 
excellent  Mr.  Pecksniff:  *' My  friends,  let  us  remember 
our  moral  responsibilities."  What  is  the  moral  influence 
of  this  tale  of  a  second  love  as  a  regeneration  of  the  heart, 
as  the  same  grand  sensation  as  the  first,  and  as  a  compen- 
sation for  the  mistakes  of  the  first  ?  What  is  the  influence 
of  this  destruction  of  the  simple  faith  that  love  is  an  infalli- 
ble intuition,  which  lasts  for  life,  and  of  allowing  that  it 
is  prone  to  err,  and  that  it  may  be  repeated,  and  even  that 
another  may  make  amends  for  the  mistake  of  the  jire- 
vious  ? 

What  influence  may  this  have  on  the  happiness,  or  —  to 
use  terms  of  broader  allowance  —  on  the  resignation  and 
brave  endurance  of  married  life  ?  For  it  has  been  much 
argued  by  high  authority,  against  the  divorce  laws,  that 
the  indissolubility  of  marriage  is  the  best  assurance  of  final 
perseverance  in  love  and  the  most  solid  foundation  for  con- 
jugal contentment;  and  on  the  other  hand,  that  available 
divorce  is  a  dissolver  of  wedded  love/ and  a  fertile  genera- 
tor of  incompatibility  of  temper  and  of  all  that  dissatis- 
faction which  seeks  for  divorce. 

If  the  society  novel  sets  forth  the  mistakes  of  first  love, 
and  the  amends  of  second  love,  shall  not  its  influence  on 
the  fancies   of  the  married  be  like  that  of    the  divorce 


SECOND   LOVE   IN   THE   MODEllN    NOVEL.  41 

facility  ?  So  many  of  the  married,  in  bursts  of  confidence, 
have  confessed  that  it  is  not  what  the  lover's  fancy  painted, 
that  the  saying  has  general  acceptation  that  wedlock  is  in 
some  degree  a  disappointment.  What  may  be  the  inllucnce 
of  glowing  descriptions  of  escape  from  its  mistakes,  and  of 
compensating  bliss  in  another,  upon  the  mind  which  is 
bravely  combating  this  shade  of  disappointment  ? 

If  the  novel  represents  love  as  prone  to  mistake,  shall 
not  each  mind  be  more  ready  to  admit  the  idea  of  mistake? 
If  it  represents  love  as  renewable,  refreshed  and  regener- 
ated as  soon  as  it  chances,  and  as  finding  comjiensation  in 
a  better  choice,  shall  not  the  fancies  be  tempted  to  rim  on 
the  chances  ?  Many  have  confessed  that  they  began  to 
repent  as  soon  as  their  ardent  pursuit  had  won.  Many 
that  no  sooner  were  they  married  than  they  began  to  con- 
sider whether  they  might  not  have  done  better.  Reckon- 
ing that  not  more  than  one  in  a  thousand  would  have  this 
candor,  the  statistical  fiend  would  find  the  whole  number 
appalling. 

The  novels  easily  dispatch  the  off  party  to  make  place 
for  another  inning.  Unsatisfactory  husbands,  like  other 
men,  have  many  vices  and  dangerous  adventures  conven- 
ient for  their  taking  off.  Stupid  wives  are  clever  in  dying 
in  the  novel,  although  stupidity  gives  longevity  in  real 
life.  The  novel  writer,  his  remorseless  eye  in  a  fine  frenzy 
rolling,  glaring  from  heaven  to  earth,  can  discover  many 
ways  of  shuffling  off  the  mortal  coil  of  man  or  wife  in 
order  to  rectify  the  mistakes  of  marriage. 

But  this  mortal  shuffle  is  not  so  easy  in  real  life. 
Herein  is  an  instance  of  the  fallacy  of  the  novel  as  a 
mirror  of  society.  Herein  is  a  glaring  failure,  which  alone 
is  a  condemnation.  It  raises  fancies  and  wishes  by  ways 
of  fruition  in  the  novel  which  can  not  be  availed  of  in  real 
life  without  getting  into  trouble.     Perhaps  many  wives  are 


42  SECOND   LOVE  IN  THE   MODERN   NOVEL. 

dispatched  by  the  slow  process  of  persevering  unkindness 
and  cruelty,  and  perhaps  a  man  now  and  then  becomes 
matrimonially  blighted  and  so  withers  away.  But  the  dis- 
posing of  them  by  acute  means  may  lead  to  unpleasantness. 

Civilization  creates  an  environment  of  impediments  to 
freedom.  A  doctor's  certificate  is  required  to  get  people 
under  ground.  Coroners  are  pursuing  their  calling  and 
election.  If  the  leaving  seems  desirable  to  the  left,  the 
neighborly  charity  susj^ects  it  expedited.  Indeed,  the 
moral  difference  between  wishing  the  going  and  helping 
it  is  narrow.  Faith  in  the  betterment  in  the  other  world 
encourages  the  dispatcher  and  makes  his  work  a  benevo- 
lence. If  the  second  love  comes  early  it  confirms  .the  sus- 
picion. Each  married  heart  knows  how  it  is,  and  reasons 
that  the  wish  to  try  again  may  have  given  the  wings  of 
departure. 

And  so  it  comes  about  that  the  departed  is  resurrected 
before  the  time  of  that  hapj^y  reunion  of  which  the  funeral 
sermon  told  for  the  consolation  of  the  bereaved.  The  viscera 
are  given  to  a  chemist.  And  when  the  viscera,  under  such  a 
moral  jaressure,  are  given  to  a  chemist  to  analyze,  to  testify 
in  court  as  a  scientific  expert,  he  is  pretty  sure  to  find  some- 
thing in  them.  If  a  trial  follows,  each  married  heart's 
knowledge  of  itself  carries  the  conviction  in  the  general  mind. 

That  which  is  called  progress  of  civilization  runs  its 
head  into  so  many  difficulties  that  the  mind  is  almost  per- 
suaded that  no  true  progress  is  possible.  That  conserva- 
tive gentlemen  who,  when  the  rumbling  work  of  creation 
began,  exclaimed  that  the  framework  of  things  was  going 
to  pieces,  saw  much  to  confirm  his  protest  in  what  followed, 
when  the  very  first  man,  for  whom  all  this  work  was 
done,  plunged  into  a  life  of  trouble,  and  when,  ever  since 
that  time,  the  chief  end  of  man  seems  to  be  to  fulfill  that 
financial  obligation  which  is  called  ''  the  devil  to  pay." 


SECOND    LOVE    IN    THE    MODERN   NOVEL.  43 

This  progress  of  the  novel  is  an  instance  of  the  falhicy 
of  all  that  is  called  progress.  Adapting  itself  to  the  actual 
conditions,  it  concedes  a  second  love.  More  than  that,  it 
impeaches  the  infallibility  of  the  first  love,  and  makes 
second  love  an  amends.  But  in  working  this  out  it  has  to 
depart  from  human  conditions  by  dispatching  the  unloved 
party  to  clear  the  way.  Tlie  conventionalities  of  actual 
society  do  not  allow  this  facility.  Therefore  this  progress 
of  the  novel  only  excites  fancies,  hopes  and  longings  which 
are  vain  in  real  life,  and  which  disturb  the  resignation  of 
the  married. 

Each  step  of  progress  makes  necessary  several  other 
steps.  The  novel  can  not  stop  in  this  disjointed  state.  It 
must  not  disturb  conjugal  felicity  with  fancies  of  new  loves, 
and  then  leave  no  way  of  attainment  save  by  killing  off. 
The  novel  can  kill  with  impunity;  but  in  real  life  the  par- 
ties who  ought  to  go  are  most  likely  to  stay.  The  progres- 
sive novel  must  go  a  step  further  in  adaptation  to  society, 
and  must  bring  in  divorce  as  the  way  of  amending  the 
mistakes  of  the  first  love  by  the  wiser  affinities  of  the  second . 

All  will  see  the  eternal  fitness  of  these  things.  The 
concession  that  the  infallible  intuition  of  first  love  may  be 
mistaken,  and  that  second  love  may  compensate  for  the 
mistakes  of  the  first,  requires  for  its  completeness  an  easy 
way  of  unyoking.  This  is  a  field  which  has  not  been 
worked  by  the  novelist.  A  great  deal  may  be  made  of  it. 
Some  high  American  novelists  have  said  that  the  stories 
have  all  been  told,  and  the  business  of  the  novel  is  now  to 
analyze  his  character;  i.  e.,  to  pull  out  the  straw  stuffing 
of  his  figures.  But  here  is  the.  great  field  of  divorce, 
which  is  wholly  unworked,  and  which  has  stories  of  early 
and  often  love,  compared  to  which  the  novelist's  killing  off 
his  mismates  is  clumsy  brutality. 

In  working  this  fresh  field  the  novelist  will  leave  out 


44       SECOND  LOVE  IN  THE  MODEKN  NOVEL. 

the  unwholesomeness  of  the  limitation  of  divorce  to  the 
one  beastly  cause,  and  will  let  his  fancy  career  in  the  inner 
history  of  the  decline  and  fall  of  married  love;  in  the 
rising  feeling  of  the  irksomeness  of  the  yoke  and  of  the 
bondage  at  which  the  heart  has  rebelled;  in  the  pitiful 
longing  for  a  better  affinity  and  for  freedom  to  try  again; 
in  the  infinite  field  of  the  tragedies  of  the  heart  in  wed- 
lock, which,  as  Macbeth  says,  the  poor  heart  would  fain 
confess,  but  dare  not. 

All  this  would  be  a  new  and  greater  field  to  the  novelist. 
The  old-time  novel  ended  with  the  fruition  of  love  in  mar- 
rying the  lovers,  as  if  that  were  all.  The  new  novel  will 
find  a  vastly  greater  world  in  the  history  of  love  after  mar- 
riage. It  will  lack  no  feature  to  make  the  novel  tragic  and 
intense,  and  it  will  come  nearer  home  to  the  heart  of  human 
nature  and  to  the  realism  of  human  experience. 

But  again  the  question  recurs,  What  will  be  the  moral 
influence?  Will  this  be  progress?  Is  not  all  progress  on 
the  down  grade?  There  are  old  beliefs  which  are  stuck 
to,  although  delusions,  because  of  a  lack  of  a  substitute. 
Is  it  not  wiser  to  stick  to  the  theory  of  the  old-time  ro- 
mance that  love  is  a  divinely-sent  spiritual  unction,  which 
is  infallible  in  selection  of  the  object,  and  which  is  taken 
f  but  once;  and  that  if  second  marriage  is  tolerable  at  all, 
/  it  is  a  concession  to  young  children,  and  is  a  marriage  of 
convenience  in  which  love  is  not  looked  for?  The  youthful 
mind  still  remains  in  the  primitive  innocence  of  this  idea. 

The  only  going  to  the  root  of  the  matter  is  to  root  out 
f  the  idea  of  a  second  love  under  any  circumstances.  Even 
the  toleration  of  a  second  marriage  to  get  a  foster  mother 
for  the  young  ones  is  a  shake  to  the  foundation  of  married 
love,  by  its  example  of  the  possibilities.  And  as  the  facil- 
ities for  another  chance  are  increased,  will  they  not  make 
men  more  reckless  in  thrusting  their  necks  into  the  con- 


SECOND   LOVE   IN  THE   MODERN   NOVEL.  45 

jugal  yoke?  Tlic  looseness  of  divorce — as  it  is  called — will 
have  to  grow  a  hundred-fold  looser  before  it  catches  up 
with  the  looseness  of  marrying.  Does  not  the  whole  busi- 
ness of  second  love  tend  the  same  way? 

The  modern  novel  has  gone  so  far  in  second  love  as  a 
compensation  for  the  mistaken  first,  that  it  must  go  faither 
and  provide  an  easy  way  to  the  compensation.  But  is  it 
not  better  to  stick  to  the  old  faith,  and  to  the  old  forms  of 
sound  words,  by  which  first  love  was  a  capital  thing,  like 
hanging,  which  can  have  no  renewing,  and  by  whicli  there 
shall  be  held  before  the  minds  of  mankind  the  certainty 
that  when  they  thrust  their  heads  into  the  matrimonial 
noose  they  must  stand  up  to  the  consequences? 


IX. 

THE  ANCIENT  AND  HONORABLE  CAT.  . 

TWO  beasts  out-  of  all  that  took  passage  with  Noah 
have  attached  themselves  to  the  human  family  so  as 
to  have  become  household  members,  the  dog  and  the  cat. 
One  is  of  a  sycophantic  and  transparent  nature,  fawning 
for  notice,  and  abject  under  whipping;  ready  to  lick  the 
hand  that  smites,  and  to  do  grateful  antics  as  soon  as  the 
rod  is  laid  down;  but  yet  having  an  attachment  and  fidelity 
which  flatter  the  dominating  nature  of  man,  and  gain  the 
affection  of  women  and  children.  A  notable  fact  is  that 
although  dogs  brought  up  in  rich  households  are  surly  to 
poor  people,  yet  poverty  does  not  alienate  them  in  their 
own  households,  while  it  makes  their  attachment  better 
appreciated.  Thus  dogs,  like  children,  are  the  peculiar 
blessings  of  the  poor. 

The  other  of  these  beasts  is  of  a  mysterious,  dignified, 
self-contained  nature,  courting  no  notice,  revealing  no 
emotion,  receiving  all  caressing  as  a  just  tribute  to  merit, 
submissive  to  no  chastisement,  dignifiedly  resenting  all 
abuse,  having  the  courage  of  entire  confidence  in  ability  to 
take  care  of  itself,  as  impassive  almost  as  any  other  of  the 
lares  and penates,  and  yet  with  an  air  which  has  created 
the  belief  that  it  is  a  being  of  mysterious  knowledge; 
attached  to  the  household,  and  particularly  to  the  house, 
and  yet  with  an  air  of  a  protecting  divinity,  to  which  all 
caressing  and  service  are  only  the  proper  tribute. 

Thus  this  creature  bears  a  double  character,  one  as  a 
familar  household  animal,  with  a  propensity  for  mice, 
canary  birds  and  "such  small  deer";  the  other  as  a  myste- 

46 


THE   ANCIENT  AND   HONORABLE  CAT.  47 

rions  being,  having  strange  relations  to  spirits  of  good  and 
evil,  to  witches,  to  fate,  and  to  many  things  good  and 
wicked.  The  nature  of  the  mind  is  to  think  more  of  the 
wicked;  but  all  that  runs  in  popuhir  tradition  of  the  cat, 
such  as  her  stealing,  to  the  cradle  and  sucking  the  sleeping 
baby's  breath,  are  ridiculously  unfounded.  As  to  the 
popular  belief  that  the  cat  has  nine  lives,  it  has  some 
color  in  the  popular  belief  in  all  ages  that  the  cat  has  rela- 
tions with  the  beings  which  are  called  spirits,  and  that  it 
haunts  the  cat-slayer. 

The  fancy  fills  the  unknown  with  wonders,  and  of  the 
cat  it  must  be  said  that  of  all  animals  it  is  the  most  myste- 
rious. A  combination  of  the  springiest  muscles,  it  has 
ever  the  air  of  repose.  Instantly  discerning  everything 
about,  it  has  the  manner  of  observing  nothing.  The 
electricity  in  its  fur  is  another  mysterious  property.  It 
has  always  the  look  of  contemplation  and  contentment. 
Yet  this  creature,  that  prefers  the  chimney  corner  by  day, 
and  the  warm  side  of  everything,  sallies  out  into  the  cold 
night,  and  for  aught  we  know,  may  be  mounted  on  the 
shoulder  of  a  witch  as  she  rides  through  the  air  on  her 
broomstick  to  some  rendezvous  of  her  kind.  Or  the  cat 
may  be  merely  bent  on  social  converse,  her  natural  modesty 
perferring  the  veil  of  night. 

Many  are  wont  to  say  they  hate  cats,  and  think  they] 
commend  themselves,  and  that  they  add  thereto  by  saying 
they  love  dogs.  This  is  because  the  cat  is  above  their  un- 
derstanding, and  because  the  dog  fawns  upon  them.  The 
cat  has  a  place  in  tradition,  religion  and  literature  which 
lifts  it  into  a  sphere  high  above  the  dog,  whose  name, 
from  time  immemorial,  though  very  unjustly,  has  been 
ignominious.  The  law  of  Moses  forbids  the  price  of  a  dog 
and  the  hire  of  a  pious  woman  for  an  act  of  impropriety, 
to  be  brought  to  the  sanctuary  as  gifts.     Although  unjust. 


48  THE   ANCIENT  AND   HONORABLE   CAT. 

tliissliows  that  the  dog  has  always  been  regarded  as  a  com- 
mon beast,  whilst  the  cat  is  of  high  lineage. 

The  cat  is  the  principal  performer  in  many  stories 
of  folk  lore.  It  is  associated  with  religious  rites  as 
well  as  with  those  of  witches.  The  learned  Egyptians 
worshiped  the  cat  as  the  Goddess  Pasht — the  name  evi- 
dently taken  from  the  feline  speech.  "  Thrice  the  brindled 
cat  hath  mewed/' say  the  Macbeth  witches  when  working 
np  a  catastrophe.  Mahomet  had  a  favorite  cat  named 
Muezza — the  name  clearly  derived  from  the  cat  language — 
which  he  treated  with  high  consideration.  Probably  this, 
and  not  the  dove  that  whispered  in  his  ear,  inspired  the 
Koran.  The  cat  has  more  language  than  any  other  beast  but 
man.  The  Abbe  Galiani  studied  this  tongue,  and  detected 
more  than  twenty  different  inflections,  and  was  certain 
that  the  cat  always  uses  the  same  sound  to  express  the 
same  thing.  Cats  surpass  all  animals  in  singing  with 
words,  and  their  entrails  are  used  for  the  principal  musi- 
cal instrument,  which  gives  a  sound  sympathetically  sug- 
gestive of  its  source. 

Cats  have  a  high  place  in  heraldry,  and  races  and  clans 
have  been  named  after  them.  The  Gaelic  name  of  the 
Duchess  of  Sutherland  means  ''the  great  lady  of  the 
cat."  Speaking  of  its  independence,  Champfleury  says  : 
"Man  has  sought  the  society  of  the  cat;  it  is  not  the  cat 
that  has  sought  the  society  of  man."  Said  Chamfort  : 
"  The  cat  does  not  caress  us,  it  caresses  itself  on  us." 
Dupont  Nemours  thought  that  the  more  extensive  view 
which  cats  take  of  the  world  from  housetops  gives  them  a 
higher  character  and  more  language  than  dogs  have. 
Among  the  other  illustrious  friends  to  cats  are  Victor 
Hugo,  TheophileGautier,  Prosper  Merimee,  Chateaubriand 
Cardinal  Wolsey  and  Richelieu.  The  popular  belief  that 
the  devil  often  puts  on  the  form  of  a  black  cat,  no  more 


THE  A2TCIEXT  AND   HONORABLE  CAT.  49 

condemns  cats  than  tlie  fact  that  he  often  takes  on  the 
form  of  a  beautiful  woman  condemns  all  beautiful  and 
bewitching  women. 

One  of  the  highest  testimonies  to  the  interesting  char- 
acter of  cats  is  that  lone  single  Avomen  are  attached  to 
them.  Many  of  them  have  made  testamentary  acknowledg- 
ments by  bequests  to  found  cat-retreats  and  by  legacies  to 
favorite  cats.  Not  only  has  the  cat  more  language  than 
other  beasts,  but  it  enviously  understands  human  speech. 
An  unjust  feeling  is  entertained  against  it  because  of  its 
liking  for  canary  birds;  but  this  game  propensity  proves 
its  high  rank,  for  the  game  propensity  is  thought  the 
noblest  part  of  man. 

The  mystery  of  the  cat's  character  is  probably  the 
cause  of  a  vulgar  antipathy,  but  this  is  due  to  ignorance. 
The  cat  is  not  bound  to  furnish  understanding  in  order  to 
avoid  prejudice.  It  is  too  high-minded  to  care.  Many 
benevolent  persons,  fearful  of  a  multiplication  of  the 
household  cat,  drown  her  kittens.  So,  from  a  limited 
trust  in  Providence,  many  suppress  populating.  Some 
elegant  families  take  a  bag  of  kittens  and  distribute  them 
in  their  drives.  If  they  would  let  the  mother  cat  alone 
she  would  j)rovide  for  them  w^ithout  such  cruelty.  A  cat 
blessed  with  a  large  litter  does  not  settle  it  on  the  family. 
At  a  proper  time  she  will  place  her  kittens  among  the 
neighbors,  showing  great  discernment  by  her  choice  of 
places;  and  they  great  intelligence  by  remaining  as  placed. 

A  society  mother  does  not  practice  more  consideration 
in  finding  husbands  for  her  nine  daughters,  than  a  mother 
cat  in  finding  situations  for  her  nine  kittens.  SHie  will 
return  to  play  with  each,  and  then  leave  it  without  any 
movement  on  its  part  to  go  back  with  her.  The  mystery 
and  supernatural  part  of  the  cat  are  very  interesting,  but 
its  visible  domestic  qualities  are  admirable.  Its  modesty 
4 


50  THE  AKCIEKT  AND  HONORABLE  CAT. 

is  exceptional  among  animals.  Its  dignity,  composure  and 
courage  are  wonderful.  It  will  repose  on  the  sidewalk 
where  at  any  moment  its  enemy,  the  dog,  may  come  along, 
serene  in  its  confidence  in  its  ability  to  take  care  of  itself. 
Even  little  kittens  do  this. 

The  assumption  is  that  the  dog  and  cat  are  natural  ene- 
mies. The  cat  is  too  high-minded  to  be  a  natural  enemy 
to  any  creature.  Such  animals  as  it  hunts  it  hunts  for 
sport  and  food,  in  which  it  shares  thewnobility  of  man;  but 
it  is  contented  to  have  its  food  without  this  trouble.  The 
puppy  and  kitten  brought  up  together  will  eat  out  of  the 
same  dish,  and  will  make  a  very  jolly  family  party.  Taking 
thought  of  their  prolific  habit,  not  yet  repressed  by  fashion, 
the  inquiry  naturally  arises,  what  becomes  of  the  cats,  that 
they  do  not  overrun.  Judging  by  their  character,  it  may 
be  presumed  that  they  go  to  the  place  provided  for  cats, 
where  all  is  well  With  them. 


THE  BABY  AND  THE  BALLOT. 

THE  argument  for  woman's  enfranchisement  iS'  com- 
pleted when  placed  on  the  foundation  of  those  self- 
evident  truths  upon  which  man  has  built  his  political 
structure.  He  can  not  meet  this  without  kicking  out  his 
own  underpinning.  Nothing  more  is  required  to  embrace 
woman,  save  to  declare  the  like  self-evident  truths  that 
sex  is  not  a  radical  difference  of  nature,  but  is  only  a  slight 
variation  of  form,  of  no  significance  as  to  different  capa- 
bilities or  spheres  of  activity.  From  this  it  follows  that 
the  existing  differences  have  been  made  by  man's  usurpation 
in  himself  of  the  rights  of  the  whole.  And,  with  en- 
lightenment, the  opinion  is  growing  that  most  of  that 
which  is  thought  a  radical  distinction  is  in  the  outward 
apparel. 

Any  addition  to  the  completed  argument  spoils  the 
symmetry,  and  is  apt  to  topple  over  the  structure.  In 
particular  an  argument  which  builds  upon  the  solid  foun- 
dation of  the  equality  of  the  sexes  is  shattered  by  addi- 
tional reasons  of  her  peculiar  sexual  qualities.  This  jumps 
from  the  firm  base  of  equality  to  the  abyss  of  inequality 
and  of  special  claims.  Those  advanced  women  who  are 
bravely  and  logically  claiming  equal  rights  need  to  be 
guarded  against  flattering  ascriptions  of  superior  virtues 
as  a  superior  claim  to  the  suffrage.  This  deludes  them 
from  their  standing  on  the  logic  of  equal  rights,  and  puts 
a  weapon  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy,  who  reasons  that  if 
they  are  morally  or  spiritually  purer  it  is  because  secluded 
from  politics  and  man's  business,  and  that  this  purity  will 

51 


52  THE   BABY  AND  THE   BALLOT. 

be  lost  to  the  family  if  women  shall  mingle  in  public  life. 
Also  when  woman  has  put  her  cause  on  the  foundations  of 
absolute  reason,  she  needs  to  guard  against  invoking  the 
aid  of  the  sympathies;  for  reason  and  the  feelings  are 
mutually  destructive. 

The  whole  diapason  of  human  nature  is  sounded  in  be- 
half of  woman  suffrage  by  the  argument,  now  familiar  to 
the  platform,  that  by  woman's  disfranchisement  the  sav- 
ing influences  of  "the  mother  element  "have  been  ex- 
eluded  from  the  political  constitution.  He  who  has 
known  what  it  is  to  have  a  mother  is  at  once  convinced 
that  a  political  society  from  which  the  mother  element  is 
excluded  has  shut  out  the  larger  half  of  the  regenerative 
elements;  and  that  this  is  enough  to  account  for  all  the 
growing  imperfections  of  the  body  politic.  For  that  it  is 
growing  worse  is  confessed  by  all  true  reformers.  Indeed, 
to  discover  that  all  is  going  to  the  bad  is  the  first  step  of 
philosophical  intelligence,  and  is  a  degree  of  wisdom 
which  comes  with  those  years  that  convert  us  all  to  sages. 
From  the  premise  that  society  is  going  to  ruin,  the  argu- 
ment is  unavoidable  that  something  is  wrong.  And.when 
philosophers  of  woman's  wrongs  point  out  how  man's  usurpe 
supremacy  has  cut  natural  society  in  two,  and  thrown  out 
the  better  half  including  the  mother  element,  they  seem  to 
give  an  adequate  cause  for  tlie  inverted  progress,  and  to 
have  clearly  shown  the  way  to  regenerate  the  body  politic. 

Yet,  often  is  it  seen  that  a  reason  which  appears  sound 
by  itself  is  unsound  in  the  totality.  iThe  error  is  in  apply- 
ing human  nature  to  our  political  institutions;  whereas 
they  are  founded  upon  modern  discoveries  of  self-evident 
truths  which  reverse  the  order  of  all  nature.  Human 
nature,  and  in  particular  that  part  of  all  nature  which  be- 
longs to  the  propagation  of  species,  or  the  mother  element, 
dates  back  to  an  early  period  of  living  existence;  whereas. 


THE   BABY  AND  THE   BALLOT.  53 

the  self-evident  truths  upon  which  our  jiolitical  system  is 
founded  are  a  recent  invention,  first  discovered  by  some 
much  advanced  French  philosophers,  and  subsequently 
imported  to  this  country  and  discovered  again  by  Thomas 
Ir'aine,  Thomas  Jellerson,  and  some  others,  and  here,  as  in 
France,  applied  to  the  destruction  of  existing  institutions. 
Up  to  that  period  political  society  had  grown  upon  simple 
natural  laws  and  human  nature;  these  self-evident  truths 
antagonized  all  this. 

A  philosophical  definition  of  Democracy,  which  had  a 
long  standing  on  the  cover  of  The  Democratic  Revieiu, 
published  at  Washington  before  the  evil  days  came  which 
overthrew  the  long  Democratic  regime,  was  this:  '*  Democ- 
racy— the  supremacy  of  man  over  his  accidents.''  Politi- 
cal equality  is  man's  supremacy  over  the  environment. 
Nature's  order  is  inequality.  Chaos  was  equality.  Natural 
evolution  is  from  the  homogeneous  to  the  heterogeneous — 
from  the  equal  to  the  unequal — and  the  creature  is  the 
creation  of  the  environment.  One  need  not  be  cleverer 
than  Captain  Corcoran  to  go  on  stringing  these  profound 
maxims,  but  this  shall  suffice  to  show  that  our  political 
system  soars  above  human  and  all  other  nature.  In  tha 
order  of  nature  the  strong  govern,  and  naturally  the  weak 
have  a  government  superior  to  themselves.  In  the  order 
of  political  equality  the  weak  govern.  It  fulfills  that 
Scripture  which  saith,  ''God  hath  chosen  the  foolish  things 
of  the  world  to  confound  the  wise,  and  the  weak  things  to  . 
confound  the  mighty." 

Nature's  law  of  political  constitutions  is  club  law — the 
rule  of  the  strongs  A  political  constitution,  founded 
upon  equality,  reverses  nature's  order;  therefore,  this 
prescription  of  the  mother  element  as  a  cure  for  joolitical 
society,  Avhose  foundation  truths  overturn  all  nature,  is 
clearly  inapplicable.     Besides^  the  mother  element  itself 


54  THE  BABY   AND  THE   BALLOT. 

is  of  all  the  elements  of  nature  the  most  adverse  to  equal- 
ity. A  principle  essential  to  the  perpetuation  of  animal 
life  makes  her  think  her  young  of  more  consequence  than 
all  other  young — more  than  the  very  framework  of  society, 
and  renders  her  incapable  of  conceiving  of  equal  capaci- 
ties, equal  merits,  or  equal  rights  in  any  other  beings. 
The  babe  is  for  the  time  a  despot,  and  the  mother  its 
willing  slave,  and  the  relation  is  as  far  as  can  be  from  all 
ideas  of  equal  rights  and  self-evident  truths. 

Maternity  appears  the  most  mind-absorbing  of  all  oc- 
cupations. This  observation  is  not  to  oppose  the  enfran- 
chisement of  woman,  but  to  examine  the  question  whether, 
when  woman  has  been  admitted  to  the  occupation  of  pol- 
itics, Avitli  all  which  that  imjilies,  she  is  to  continue  to  let 
the  maternal  function  dominate  her  own  life,  and  whether 
the  greatest  progress  will  not  be  in  emancipating  her  from 
the  mother  element  and  all  its  subjugating  forces,  instead 
of  bringing  it  into  politics.  This  question  will  not  alarm 
the  philosoj^hic  mind.  No  consequences  to  the  human  race 
can  disturb  the  theories  of  the  philosopher  of  the  human- 
ities. 

The  limitation  of  the  human  mind  makes  it  unable  to 
comprehend  the  relations  of  a  perfected  state  of  society, 
save  by  the  conditions  of  the  present.  The  unknown  can 
be  conceived  only  by  the  known.  While  the  mind  can 
think  of  hajjpiness  only  as  the  pursuit  and  gratification  of 
wants,  and  the  possession  of  the  means  to  command  the 
service  of  others  to  our  ease  and  pleasure,  it  is  unable  to 
think  of  a  state  of  perfect  happiness  in  which  are  no  wants, 
and  therefore  no  pursuit  and  no  gratification;  where  wealth 
can  give  no  distinction,  and  can  command  nothing,  foras- 
much as  all  are  wealthy.  Thus  the  laboring  mind  has  to 
find  rest  in  a  heaven  of  the  same  social  distinctions  as  here, 
and  in  the  ides,  of  the  ready  supply  of  those  things  which 


THE    BABY    AND   THE    BALLOT.  55 

are  desired  and  are  unattaincd  here.  And  so  the  ntmost 
stretch  of  the  ideal  perfect  state  comes  down  to  the  simple 
heaven  of  the  child,  who  thinks  it  a  place  where  candy  and 
gingerbread  are  unstinted,  and  swinging  on  the  gate  un- 
molested. Or  if  the  fancy  attemi)ts  to  construct  a  state  of 
perfect  bliss  in  which  all  human  nature  is  extinct,  it  is  apt 
to  make  one  whose  promise  is  not  an  encouragement  to  well 
doing. 

In  like  manner  they  who  propose  the  revolution  of  so- 
ciety by  the  enfranchisement  of  woman  are  unable  to  con- 
ceive the  new  order  of  things  save  by  the  present,  and  so 
they  think  that  she  is  to  continue  in  the  same  domestic 
servitude.     To  say  that  woman  has  the  same  limitation  of 
mind  is  no  reflection  on  her  intellect.     She  demands  that 
which  is  to  reconstruct  society  from  the  bottom;  and  yet 
she  reasons  as  if  it  would  be  only  a  continuation  of  her 
present  humble  state,  and  thereby  would  bring  the  mother  , 
element  into  the  State.     But  the  office  of  propagating  the  : 
species  is  the  first  instinct  of  the  lowest  order  of  living  i^ 
creatures.'    The  lowest  species  are  most  fecund;  with  rise 
in  the  scale  of  being,  fecundity  decreases.     The  higher  the  ' 
develojiment  the  lesser  the  multiplication  of  kind.     The 
lower  orders  of  human  society  are  most  prolific.     Culture 
shortens  the  government  census,  and  therefore  it  is  plain 
that  the  ultimate  of  progress  is  the  extinction  of  the  race. 

The  function  of  maternity  is  so  absorbing  to  the  miiul 
that  it  appears  to  make  woman  incapable  of  statesmanship. 
During  the  period  of  gestation  her  ideas,  like  the  beings 
of  the  German  scientist,  must  be,  in  great  degree,  evolved 
from  her  own  consciousness  rather  than  acquired  from 
outward  things.  As  soon  as  tlie  child  is  born  a  transform- 
ation takes  place  in  the  mother  to  adapt  herself  to  its 
feeble  understanding.  Nature  has  provided  a  simple  lan- 
guage for  all  creatures,  in  which  the  mother  and  her  young 


66  THE   BABY  AND  THE  BALLOT. 

communicate  their  wants  and  emotions.  This  language  is 
partly  vocal,  partly  by  osculation,  and  perhaps  it  has  some 
mysterious  interchanges  which  may  be  explained  as  elec- 
trical— a  word  which  now  accounts  intelligibly  for  the  un- 
intelligible. 

The  philologer  can  make  nothing  of  this  language  but 
gibberish.  It  may  not  have  terms  for  intricate  ratiocina- 
tion, but  it  seems  abundant  for  the  expression  of  the 
emotions  of  the  mother  and  her  young.  This  gift  comes 
only  to  the  mother.  Maidens  and  childless  wives  make 
attempts,  which  only  show  that  in  them  it  is  a  latent 
speech.  To  the  mother  it  comes  as  an  inspiration,  and  is 
abundant  for  all  her  ideas.  With  this  she  puts  herself  on  an 
intellectual  level  with  her  babe,  and  begins  with  it  to  learn 
the  simplest  facts  of  human  existence  and  the  most  rudi- 
mentary ideas.  Thus  does  slie  travel  pari  passu  with  its 
forming  mind,  and  thus  at  each  birth  the  mother  is  born 
again,  and  becomes  in  mind  a  little  child. 

She  even  becomes  more  infantile  in  intellect  than  her 
infant;  for  its  bizarre  motions  and  notions  seem  to  her 
phenomenal  in  intellectual  brightness.  She  asks  the  doc- 
tor if  its  brain  is  not  developing  too  fast  for  its  body,  and 
she  becomes  apprehensive  that  he  is  too  bright  to  live  long. 
She  requires  the  whole  household  and  all  visitors  to  come 
down  to  the  same  infancy  of  mind,  and  to  admire  the  signs 
of  prodigious  intellect  in  the  baby.  No  other  topic  can  be 
introduced,  or  it  is  quickly  routed  by  something  that  baby 
does  or  says,  which  shows  to  the  mother  a  brain  which 
shall  turn  all  previous  statesmanship  to  folly.  Can  it  be 
that  a  maternal  office  which  returns  the  mother  to  the 
mental  state  of  the  babe,  at  each  successive  birth,  can  be 
made  compatible  with  capacity  for  practical  politics,  Avith- 
out  which  woman  suffrage  might  be  an  instrument  for  her 
further  subjugation? 


THE   BABY   AND  THE   BALLOT.  57 

How  can  tlie  motlier's  mind  be  interested  in  the  pro- 
found science  of  statesmansliip,  which  has  made  such 
strides  in  our  free  system,  by  which  public  debt  is  converted 
to  a  public  blessing  by  being  put  into  the  form  of  money; 
by  which  the  people  make  themselves  rich  by  issuing  their 
own  notes  of  hand  for  circulation  among  themselves;  by 
which  taxes  on  the  consumer  are  made  a  propelling  force 
to  the  consumer's  industry;  by  which  the  people  are  made 
rich  by  buying  eighty  cents  worth  of  silver  and  uttering  it  on 
themselves  as  a  dollar;  and  so  on  through  all  the  miraculous 
achievements  of  great  American  statesmanship?  What  are 
all  these  great  "  issues"  to  a  mother?  In  the  most  learned 
discourse  on  them  some  motion  of  baby^s  would  reduce 
her  mind  to  its  level  again,  and  she  would  incontinently 
break  out  in  that  wonderful  speech  which  is  called  baby 
talk,  for  the  reason  that  it  is  mother  talk. 

There  is  much  preaching  of  the  great  command  to 
increase  and  multiply  and  replenish  the  earth,  which  would 
be  relevant  if  the  earth  were  deluged  again  for  ninety  days. 
It  holds  up  as  the  example  the  large  families  of  the  early 
settlers  of  New  England,  whose  austere  principles  left  them 
few  other  amusements.  Or,  as  a  concession  to  modern 
degeneracy,  it  abates  half,  and  names  six  or  eight  as  the 
number  of  duty.  Can  a  woman  be  intellectually  capable  \ 
of  statesmanship,  who,  in  the  period  of  her  womanhood  is  six 
or  eight  times  set  back  to  a  state  of  mental  infancy?  If 
there  be  any  reality  in  the  most  obvious  and  ruling  facts 
of  human  existence — if  the  mother  element  be  the  power 
that  is  asserted — if  logic  be  logic,  then  is  not  the  conclu- 
sion unavoidable  that  the  office  of  maternity  is  irreconcil- 
able with  practical  politics,  and  therefore  that  woman's 
emancipation  from  maternal  servitude  is  an  indispensable 
qualification  for  the  suffrage? 

The  unphilosophical  objection  will  quickiy  be  raised 


58  THE    BABY    AND   THE    BALLOT. 

that  this  woman  suffrage  would  be  the  extinction  of  the 
human  race.  Woman  need  not  concern  herself  for  that. 
She  has  reason  enough  to  revolt  at  the  order  of  creation 
which  has  placed  on  her  the  whole  burden  of  keeping  up 
the  race.  If  she  ever  gets  her  eyes  open,  she  will  per- 
ceive that  this  has  been  the  means  of  her  subjugation. 
The  parallel  may  be  seen  in  the  bovine  societies  of  the 
Western  plains,  where  the  males  care  nothing  for  posterity, 
wear  lordly  airs,  paw  the  earth,  bellow,  magnify  them- 
selves and  grow  great,  while  the  females  are  meekly  occu- 
pied in  rearing  the  young.  Right  may  safely  leave  the 
consequences  to  take  care  of  themselves,  and  woman  has 
no  cause  to  hug  her  fetters  in  this  unfair  distribution  of 
the  burdens  of  perpetuating  the  species. 

In  this  land  of  equality,  where  every  man  that  is  born 
of  poor  but  honest  parents  rises  in  the  world,  and  when 
setting  out  takes  a  wife  to  help  him  rise,  there  have  been 
pitiful  descriptions  of  his  intellectual  progress,  while  the 
wife's  mind,  occupied  in  household  concerns,  stands  still. 
And  so  it  comes  to  pass  that  the  two,  who,  when  they 
Avere  married,  were  intellectually  equal,  have  become  in- 
tellectually unequal,  hence  uncongenial,  hence  incom- 
patible; hence  the  man  has  to  go  from  home  for  mental 
society,  and  so  on  till  the  growing  intellectual  disparity 
leads  to  divorce.  This  sad  outcome  of  man's  rise  in  the 
world  makes  it  a  calamity  for  a  married  man  to  get  on. 
He  is  much  to  be  pitied  whose  wife's  mind  remains  inert 
under  the  daily  and  nightly  teachings  of  his  growing 
culture. 

This,  however, is  a  groping  after  the  truth  without  reach- 
ing it.  The  business  of  the  household  is  not  more  absorb- 
ing to  the  mind,  and  is  as  much  a  developing  exercise  as 
the  most  of  man's  business.  Why  is  there  not  as  much 
culture  in*  it  as  in  man's  occupations — mechanical  work. 


THE   BABY   AND  THE   BALLOT.  59 

trade,  banking,  railroad  plucking  and  pooling,  the  strata- 
gems wliicli  are  requisite  to  the  successful  profession  of 
the  law,  the  quackery  which  the  medical  profession  is 
compelled  to  i)ractice  on  the  ignorant  wise,  the  minister's 
necessity  to  court  the  weaker  brethren  and  Aveaker  sisters, 
the  editor's  necessity  to  travel  with  the  prejudices  of  sub- 
scribers, and  so  on  with  all  the  manly  avocations? 
Can  the  difference  in  culture  by  these  occupations  ac- 
count for  a  growth  of  a  disparity  which  destroys  the 
once  intellectual  oneness  of  man  and  wife  ? 

There  is,  however,  a  sufficient  cause;  it  is  the  baby  oc- 
cupation that  dwarfs  the  wife's  mind  by  its  periodical 
retrograde  to  a  state  of  infancy;  while  the  man,  exempt 
from  all  this,  grows  above  her  in  intellect.  Thus  are 
these,  which  are  romantically  called  pledges  of  affection, 
made  causes  of  incompatibility.  This  is  that  which 
makes  man  find  his  wife's  mind  growing  downward,  while 
his  is  growing  upward.  This  is  that  which  has  enabled 
him  to  usurj)  the  place  of  lord  of  the  creation,  and  to  re- 
duce woman  to  such  inferiority  that  she  thinks  this  the 
divine  order.  She  hugs  her  chain,  and  talks  feebly  of 
bringing  the  mother  element  into  politics,  although  the 
very  beginning  of  equal  rights  requires  the  elimination  of 
the  mother  element  from  her  nature. 

Woman  may  properly  go  forward  in  claiming  her 
equality  in  all  things  without  heeding  posterity.  Absolute 
justice  need  not  look  out  for  consequences.  Great  jilans 
of  reform  would  never  begin  if  tiiey  feared  to  disturb 
present  conditions.  Population  has  always  been  found  an 
insuperable  obstacle  to  plans  for  improving  the  condition 
of  the  race.  All  philosophical  plans  for  perfecting  society 
begin  with  the  extinction  of  the  race,  or  have  in  this  their 
perfect  work. 

Therefore,  even  if  the  requirements  of  woman's  polit- 


60  THE  BABY  AND  THE   BALLOT.  , 

ical  equality  would  bring  the  human  race  to  an  end,  she  is 
following  the  high  precedents  of  the  philosophers  of  hu- 
manity. But  she  may  not  be  driven  from  her  just  claim 
by  sliaking  posterity  before  her.  This  is  no  special  con- 
cern of  hers.  She  should  claim  her  own,  and  leave  to  pos- 
terity the  consequences,  which  is  only  a  small  part  of  the 
saying  that  justice  should  be  done  though  the  heavens /^IL 


XI. 
RULES  TO  REFORM  GIRLS. 

AN  INDIANA  youth  of  talents  rare,  who  has  been 
raised  on  the  pure  milk  of  our  writings,  on  which 
his  plastic  soul  has  grown  in  virtue  with  that  sturdincss  of 
constitution  which  the  calf  gets  who  is  allowed  to  run  long 
with  the  cow,  informs  us  that  he  is  ''a  youth  of  seventeen 
years  of  age  who  has  raised  a  keen  edged  sword  on  the 
side  of  Right  and  Truth,"  and  that  he  hopes  it  will  stab 
him  if  he  ever  falls  into  the  ways  of  vice,  and  he  sends  us 
three  resolves  which  he  has  formed  for  the  selection  of  the 
female  object  of  his  affections — preambling  tbat  he  was 
led  to  them  by  terrible  examples,  having  ''seen  a  girl  faint 
twice  during  the  process  of  ear  boring,  and  then  in  her 
sleep  pull  the  ill  placed  metal  off  and  ruin  her  ears";  and 
having  ''seen  a  friend  called  to  the  tomb  by  the  practice 
of  tight  lacing." 

Extricated  from  that  gorgeous  efflorescence  of  words 
which  comes  from  the  ardor  of  youth,  these  rules  inexor- 
ably refuse  to  marry  any  of  the  girls  who  bore  their  ears, 
wear  ear-rings,  are  addicted  to  tight  lacing,  who  break  down 
their  delicate  frames  by  overloads  of  voluminous  skirts 
and  dragging  trains,  who  have  their  heads  turned  to  costly 
bonnets,  jewelry,  and  other  things  of  personal  adornment. 

He  who  sets  up  an  ideal  for  his  own  conduct  should  set 
a  higher  for  the  wife,  tbat  tremendous  power  for  weal  and 
woe;  or,  as  the  proverb  says:  "He  that  drives  fat  oxen 
should  himself  be  fat."  To  prescribe  perfect  rules  to 
reform  girls  is  one  of  the  finest  traits  of  budding  manhood. 
A  picture  as  interesting  as  the  youth  starting  in  Cole's 

61 


<!. 


62  RULES   TO    REFORM   GIRLS.      • 

Voyage  of  Life,  wafted  by  the  wishes  of  the  good  angel,  is 
that  of  a  youth  iu  the  dawn  of  manhood,  starting  ont 
with  resolves  for  a  noble  career,  drawing  a  keen  edged 
sword  in  the  cause  of  truth,  and  to  complete  his  outfit, 
framing  rules  to  guide  his  choice  of  his  female  partner. 
Good  resolutions  pave  the  way  of  life  broad  and  smooth, 
and  give  it  a  gentle  incline.  In  the  memoirs  of  great  and 
good  men  are  many  records  of  high  guiding  resolves  which 
they  had  made  in  youth.  These  lives  of  great  men  remind 
us  that  we,  too,  may  make  our  lives  sublime,  and  thus 
leave  on  the  sands  of  time  footprints  to  guide  following 
generations. 

Therefore  should  a  young  man  be  encouraged  in  setting 
up  ideals  of  the  good,  the  beautiful  and  the  true,  for  him- 
self, and  for  the  being  whom  he  is  to  assimilate  to  himself. 
Yet,  in  our  office  of  Mentor,  we  may  caution  our  ardent 
young  Indianian  against  rashness  in  assaulting  venerable 
customs,  and  particularly  against  beginning  his  war  for 
Truth  and  Right  by  taking  upon  himself  the  task  to  reform 
that  very  complex  creature,  the  girl,  lest  in  this  he  find  his 
keen  edged  sword  'cutting  his  own  fingers.  The  woman 
was  created  after  man,  and,  in  the  natural  way  of  progress, 
the  more  complex.  To  judge  her  as  of  the  same  nature 
as  the  man,  is  to  be  liable  to  fall  into  great  error.  Faint- 
ing in  her  may  be  merely  an  exercise.  A  single  instance 
of  somnambulism  need  not  revolutionize  the  world.  We 
should  not  announce  the  vernal  equinox,  and  tear  off  our 
undershirts,  at  the  sight  of  a  single  swallow.  The  girl  is 
altogether  too  complex  a  structure,  and  subject  to  too 
many  nerves,  and  there  are  too  many  doctors  in  the  world, 
whose  work  must  be  covered  up,  to  permit  a  positive  con- 
clusion that  it  was  tight  lacing  that  called  our  young 
Indiana  friend's  friend  to  the  tomb. 

He  who  meddles  with  the  adornments  of  the  female 


RULES  TO   REFORM  GIRLS.  C3 

person  rushes  in  where  angels  might  fear  to  hay  tlieir  hands. 
And  if  he  tries  ornamental  apparel  by  reason,  he  may  find 
no  stopping  place  short  of  the  coats  (or  the  trousers;  the 
translators  differ)  or  skins  which  were  the  first  suits  of  our 
erring  first  parents.  The  female  ear  has  a  delicate 
lobe  which  seems  formed  for  a  hanging  ornament,  and 
this  directs  the  eye  to  the  fair  cheek.  Sacred  history  shows 
that  the  ear  was  thus  applied  in  very  ancient  times.  In 
the  most  primitive  times  earrings  precede  clothes.  This 
proves  them  a  primary  necessity.  This  custom,  which 
seems  to  have  begun  with  the  human  race,  must  have  been 
founded  in  reason. 

When  Abraham's  servant,  on  a  solemn  mission  to 
choose  from  Abraham's  kindred  a  Avife  for  Isaac,  to  gener- 
ate the  chosen  race,  met  Ilebekah  at  the  well,  and  decided 
that  she  would  do,  he  "  took  a  golden  earring  of  half  a 
shekel  weight  and  gave  her,"  together  with  still  weightier 
bracelets.  When  he  told  Laban  his  mission,  and  he  referred 
the  question  to  the  damsel,  she  promptly  said  she  would 
go.  Can  it  be  doubted  that  the  earring  was  a  powerful 
agency  in  making  her  willing  to  go  to  a  strange  country, 
to  marry  a  strange  man?  Naturally  she  thought  that  the 
young  man  who  sent  such  an  earring  must  be  only  too 
sweet.  Thus  the  earring  affected  the  destiny  of  the  chosen 
people,  and,  through  them,  of  the  human  race. 

All  through  sacred  history  the  earring  is  a  cherished 
ornament.  When  Job's  friends  heard  that  his  ill  fortune 
had  changed  and  he  was  again  prosperous,  they  came  and 
each  "  gave  him  a  piece  of  money,  and  every  one  an  ear- 
ring of  gold.''  Thus  the  earring  served  to  distinguish  that 
most  noble  quality  of  our  common  nature  which  gives 
presents  to  those  who  have  abundance.  The  Hebrews, 
takir>g  an  outfit  for  a  sojourn  in  the  wiUlcrness,  borrowed 
earrings  from  the  Egyptians  so  freely  that  they  had  enough 


64  RULES  TO  EEFORM  GIRLS. 

to  sujjply  Aaron  with  gold  to  make  a  calf  for  a  god.  This 
was  the  means  of  bringing  upon  them  a  moral  lesson  that 
forever  extinguished  in  mankind  the  worship  of  the  calf 
of  gold. 

Saith  Solomon — a  very  wise  man,  and  of  much  experi- 
ence in  women — *'As  an  earring  of  gold,  so  is  a  wise  reprover 
iipon  an  obedient  ear."  Shall  an  Indiana  youth  exclude 
from  his  affections  all  those  girls  that  follow  a  custom  of 
adornment  which  is  so  ancient,  and  is  so  intimately  con- 
nected with  sacred  history?  Young  enthusiasm  in  the 
cause  of  the  good,  the  beautiful,  the  true,  revives  falling 
hope  in  humanity;  but  the  very  ardor  of  youth  tends  to 
rashness.  He  should  be  cautious  in  judging  women  for 
tight  lacing.  The  youth  who  invades  with  curious  mind 
the  precincts  of  a  girl's  dress  goes  to  the  ragged  edge  of 
propriety,  and  may  fall  into  an  evil  habit  while  thinking 
he  is  following  the  good,  the  beautiful,  the  true.  The 
fact  of  tight  lacing  is  one  which  he  can  not  properly  verify; 
therefore  he  may  judge  and  proscribe  unjustly.  One  woman 
differs  from  another  woman  in  size  and  shape,  and  they  all 
differ  from  man.  The  young  man  can  not  be  certain  of 
such  fact  without  involving  himself  in  perilous  circum- 
stances. 

Their  closed  and  fitting  garments,  kept  in  form  by  the 
stiffness  of  their  structure,  may  look  tight  when  they  are 
not.  Their  shape,  and  the  weight  of  skirts  which  our 
manners  constrain  them  to  carry,  seem  to  make  it  neces- 
sary to  support  them  in  a  large  degree  on  the  waist.  Per- 
haps an  anatomical  difference  makes  the  female  waist 
require  more  pressure  than  the  male.  A  youjig  Indianian 
may  not  know  what  is  the  true  proportion  of  a  girl's  waist. 
Perhaps  the  tapering  form  which  makes  the  waist  seem 
inadequate  to  the  superstructure  is  formed  by  an  expaasion 
of  the  latter,  which  though  artificial,  is  still  a  tribute  to 


RULES  TO  REFORM  GIRLS.  65 

the  earliest  instinct  of  innocent  chiklliood.  We  warn  our 
young  friend  against  pronouncing  such  severe  sentence  on 
girls,  on  that  which  must  be  to  him  mere  conjecture,  and 
also  from  giving  his  mind  to  a  line  of  investigation  which 
may  divert  his  sharp  sword  from  the  cause  of  truth  and 
right. 

Tlie  remark  may  be  made  in  general  on  the  foregoing, 
and  on  the  somewliat  extravagant  dcscri2)tiou  of  the 
female  dress  and  mind  which  is  given  in  the  third  resolve, 
that  men  who  have  had  experience  have  learned  that  it  is 
better  to  let  woman's  dress  alone.  Sex,  condition,  cus- 
tom, fashion  and  various  other  powei's,  have  brought  her 
dress  to  what  it  is,  and  tliese  are  forces  too  strong  for  man. 

The  adorning  of  woman  is  a  development  of  civiliza- 
tion. The  male  is  the  gorgeous  sex  in  the  lower  animals: 
the  female  the  plain.  In  the  barbarous  tribes  the  man 
decorates  himself  with  paint,  feathers  and  fine  colors,  and 
denies  these  privileges  to  the  woman.  Civilization  changes 
the  order;  the  male  becomes  plain  in  attire,  and  the  female 
gorgeous.  This  is  a  part  of  that  evolution  which  has 
lifted  woman  out  of  her  low  estate.  It  is  one  of  the  ele- 
ments in  that  deference  which  the  ci\alized  man  pays  to 
woman.  It  becomes  assimilated  with  that  beauty  which 
draws  man's  devotion,  and  thus  it  is  an  important  influ- 
ence in  perpetuating  the  race. 

There  are  occult  influences  in  woman's  decorations 
which  the  young  man  may  not  comprehend,  even  Avhen 
under  their  spell.  They  combine  with  nature  to  give  to 
her  presence  that  mysterious  charm  which  in  general 
scatters  to  the  winds  those  rules  which  men  fondly  form 
to  guide  them  in  choosing  a  wife.  Our  Indiana  young 
friend  will  need  to  copy  out  his  resolves  in  a  large  round 
hand  and  to  paste  them  in  his  hat  when  he  exposes  him- 
self to  these  charms.  Philosophers  who  have  gone  as  far 
5 


66  RULES  TO  REFORM  GIRLS. 

as  philosophy  can  in  experimenting  on  woman,  "have  at 
last  confesstd  that  they  have  made  no  advance,  because  at 
the  beginning  they  assumed  that  she  was  a  being  of  the  same 
general  nature  as  man,  and  therefore  Avas  comprehensible 
to  man.  If  she  were  so,  the  charm  of  life  would  not  be, 
and  the  race  would  not  have  gone  beyond  the  first  pair. 
Tlie  human  mind  would  cease  to  worship  that  which  it 
had  comprehended.  That  Avoman  is  incomprehensible  to 
man  is  the  grand  secret  of  his  devotion  to  her.  If  he 
could  comprehend  her,  the  social  fabric  would  dissolve. 
She  is  beyond  the  line  which  John  Stuart  Mill  draws  be- 
tween the  knowable  and  the  unknowable;  therefore  shall 
man  ever  admire  and  wonder. 


XII. 
THE  MARRIED  MAN'S  LIABILITIES. 

THE  police  theory  of  the  murder  of  Mrs.  Hull  was  a 
very  good  theory,  and  it  is  no  fault  of  the  theory  that 
the  murderer  turned  up,  and  turned  out  to  be  not  the 
theoretic  murderer.  Aiul  this  untoward  event  should  not 
be  permitted  to  shove  aside  the  fine  moral  power  of  the 
theory  that  a  man  always  wants  to  get  rid  of  his  wife,  and 
that  if  she  is  made  away  with,  he  should  be  held  guilty 
until  he  can  fetch  up  the  person  who  did  it.  And  while 
this  is  sound  on  general  principles,  a  retrospective  investi- 
gation of  the  conduct  and  conjugal  state  of  most  men, 
under  the  pressure  of  police  suspicion,  will  reveal  much 
more  confirmation  than  in  the  case  of  the  old  and  infirm 
Dr.  Hull,  who  seems  to  have  been  fortunate  in  a  wife  who 
ran  the  household. 

Firstly — to  try  the  matter  by  general  principles — the 
universally  accepted  idea  that  marriage  is  in  a  degree  a 
disappointment — that  the  ardor  of  the  lover  cools  with 
possession;  that  the  following  moons  of  married  life  are 
very  different  from  the  honeymoon,  the  expression  of 
which,  in  various  forms,  abounds  in  our  literature  and 
speech,  is,  in  a  degree,  an  imputation  to  every  married  man 
of  an  experience  which  needs  only  to  be  mentally  dwelt 
upon  until  it  becomes  an  absorbing  idea,  to  give  him  a  de- 
sire to  be  rid  of  his  wife  in  order  that  he  may  try  his  luck 
again.  Therefore,  on  general  principles,  suspicion  logically 
falls  on  the  husband  when  the  wife  is  taken  off. 

That  this  is  natural  is  instanced,  not  only  by  the  case 

of  Dr.  Hull,  but  by  a  case  recently  at  Niagara  Falls, 

67 


68  THE   MARRIED   MAN's   LIABILITIES. 

where  a  foreigner  who  had  been  visiting  the  Falls  several 
days  with  his  six  months'  wife,  in  making  a  last  round,  came 
back  from  Goat  Island  giving  out  extravagant  expressions 
of  grief,  and  relating  that  his  adored,  having  taken  a  sud- 
den fancy  to  drink  out  of  the  torrent,  in  dipping  a  cup 
toppled  over  the  bank,  and  in  a  moment  was  carried  over 
the  falls.  The  husband's  expression  was  of  a  terrible 
shock,  of  poignant  affliction,  and  all  that  a  husband  could 
express  if  it  had  been  real.  But  every  married  man  knows 
his  own  state,  and  each  one  receives  this  dreadful  narrative 
with  a  cold  incredulity.  Each  one  reflects  that  six  months 
of  wedded  bliss  were  just  about  enough  to  show  to  this 
man  that  things  are  not  as  they  seem. 

And  when  the  man's  relations  with  his  wife,  and  all 
his  conduct,  come  to  be  subjected  to  examination  under 
the  powerful  microscope  of  this  natural  suspicion,  their 
lives  must  have  been  wonderfully  harmonious,  and  his 
conduct  both  in  and  out  of  the  domestic  circle  remarkably 
correct,  if  there  shall  not  be  found  tales  of  disputes,  of 
discords,  of  such  brutality  as  denying  to  her  things  that 
she  wanted,  of  surliness  at  the  domestic  hearth,  of  com- 
plaining of  the  victuals,  of  staying  out  late,  of  seeking 
other  society,  of  irregularities  of  conduct,  which  shall  form 
a  chain  of  circumstances  to  make  suspicion  confirmation 
strong  as  Holy  Writ. 

Even  if  this  should  sometimes  err,  and  a  man  should 
now  and  then  be  hanged  for  wife  murder,  who  had  not,  in 
fact,  done  it,  should  not  this  be  afforded  for  the  sake  of 
the  moral  influence  which  will  be  kept  over  the  man's 
treatment  of  the  wife,  by  the  ever-present  sense  that  if  she 
shall  be  taken  off  in  any  manner  that  can  not  be  comi^letely 
accounted  for,  whether  by  medicine  or  by  other  methods 
of  dispatching,  all  his  treatment  of  her,  and  all  his  conduct 
outside  the  family  circle,  shall  be  subjected  to  a  searching  ex- 
amination, in  which  the  presumptions  will  be  all  against  him? 


XIII. 
ABOUT  MARRYING  RICH. 

TO  THE  editor: 

I  HAVE  a  college  education,  and  have  gone  through  tlie 
course  of  study  for  a  profession,  and  am  trying  to  get 
Hnto  practice.  But  it  is  uphill  work.  I  find  youth  and 
inexperience  an  obstacle,  which  may  last  me  till  I  am  old. 
With  hard  scratching  I  can  hardly  make  my  profession 
pay  for  only  a  moderate  style  of  board  and  clothes.  I 
have  the  entrance  into  society,  and  in  it  I  have  made  the 
friendly  acquaintance  of  the  daughter  of  a  rich  man,  who 
lives  in  elegant  style.  I  venture  to  think  that  if  I  wore  in 
make  advances  toward  a  proposal  of  marriage,  they  woiilil 
be  favorably  received.  I  think  highly  of  the  young  lady'.s 
intelligence  and  disposition,  and  I  think  her  father  would 
take  pride  in  supporting  her  in  a  handsome  establishmeiil. 
But  I  hesitate  because  I  have  fears  that  this  difference  in 
our  fortunes  may  in  future  have  an  influence  on  our  rela- 
tions as  man  and  wife.  As  newspapers  have  universal  ob- 
servation and  wisdom,  I  have  thought  best  to  consult  you 
on  this  affair.  A. 

Our  verdict  is,  better  wait,  T3ven  if  thereby  you  lose  tho 
girl.  There  comes  a  time  when  the  blindness  of  love  and 
of  the  honeymoon  is  dissipated,  and  things  come  down  to 
the  rules  of  common  sense.  A  man  should  see  that  lie 
has  a  sure  basis  for  making  his  wife  respect  him.  If  it 
were  not  that  it  would  bring  down  on  us  the  indignation 
of  our  army  of  watchful  woman  readers,  we  Avould  say 
that  the  man  should  always  keep  the  upper  hand  of  the 
wife  in  order  to  keep  her  respect.  A  man  who,  without  a 
profession  which  supports  him,  marries  a  rich  wife,  or  the 


70  ABOUT  MARRYING   RICH. 

daughter  of  a  rich  man,  and  has  to  draw  on  her  father  for 
support,  becomes  a  dependent  on  her,  and  he  may  depend 
upon  it  that  she  will  make  him  feel  it.  And  woman  can 
do  this  in  an  infinite  variety  of  lovely  ways. 

But  this  is  not  to  oppose  going  for  rich  girls  or  the 
aaughters  of  rich  men  to  marry.  Our  space  is  too  valuable 
to  waste  in  that  vain  work.  And  on  general  princij)les  we 
incline  to  think  it  well  to  have  these  prizes  in  society,  to 
incite  the  emulation  of  young  men,  and  to  be  "scooped," 
as  the  persimmons  are  knocked,  by  the  tallest  pole.  And 
a  man  with  an  education,  and  a  profession  which  has 
made  him  self-supporting,  is  independent,  and  his  educa- 
tion and  profession  and  start  in  the  world  constitute  a 
capital  which  makes  him  an  equal  match  for  the  daughter 
of  the  richest  man.  In  such  conditions  he  need  have  no 
hesitancy.  Xor  need  he  feel  his  independence  lowered  if 
her  father  comes  down  with  the  means  to  helj)  support  an 
establishnent  and  a  style  of  living  which  her  habits  re- 
quire, but  which  is  more  expensive  than  would  accord 
with  his  circumstances.  It  is  the  father's  duty  to  do  this. 
Not  to  do  it  would  be  mean,  because  it  would  expose  his 
daughter  as  a  burden  because  of  his  wealth. 

But  when  the  professional  man  has  made  this  fortunate 
and  fit  marriage,  he  should  see  to  it  that  he  relaxes  not  his 
energies  in  the  pursuit  of  his  profession,  and  that  he  keeps 
and  increases  his  standing  in  that.  This  will  preserve  his 
independence,  preserve  the  respect  of  his  fellow  men  and 
fellow  women,  preserve  the  respect  of  his  wife,  and  make  her 
so  look  upon  him  as  a  superior  being  that  she  will  not  think 
of  her  rich  father,  or  her  own  riches,  as  of  any  weight  in  the 
conjugal  scale.  If,  even  when  he  enters  such  a  marriage, 
and  has  this  start  in  a  profession,  and  has  all  its  future 
prospect,  he  then  relaxes  his  energies,  makes  no  further 
progress,  or  lets  his  practice  die,  while  he  goes  into  a  life 


ABOUT  MAKIiYIXG   RICH.  71 

of  indolence,  or  of  what  is  called  elegant  cnlture,  or  of 
pleasure  travel,  of  summering  at  Saratoga  and  Newport, 
and  wintering  at  Paris,  and  so  on,  enjoying  his  wife's 
fortune,  he  may  rely  that  with  all  this  elegant  leisure  and 
luxury  he  will  lose  his  wife's  respect,  and  that  she  will 
look  upon  him  as  a  dependent,  and  will  make  him  feel  it. 
And  his  fellow  men  and  women  will  also  regard  him  as  a 
pensioner  upon  his  wife. 

And  a  man  who  is  just  starting  in  a  profession,  and  has 
not  gained  the  self-supjiorting  point,  and  who  marries  a 
rich  wife  for  a  support,  enters  at  once  and  with  open  eyes 
upon  this  state  of  dependence.  The  chances  are  very 
small  that  he  will  ever  rise  from  it.  The  battle  of  life  de- 
mands great  energy  and  perseverance,  and  its  way  is  full 
of  discouragements.  The  assurance  of  support  by  a  rich 
wife,  and  the  calculating  upon  a  wife's  father  who.  will 
''cut  up  fat,"  has  a  strong  and  almost  irresistible  tendency 
to  debilitate  a  man's  energies,  let  down  his  ambition,  and 
weaken  his  character.  Therefore,  although  it  is  a  good 
thing  to  marry  a  rich  woman  if  the  man  has  a  basis  of  in- 
dependence, and  although  we  maintain  that  a  man  with 
an  education,  and  with  a  profession  in  which  he  has  made 
himself  self-supporting,  is  an  equal  match  for  a  rich 
woman,  yet  the  marrying  of  a  rich  woman  is  full  of  perils 
to  the  man.  But  all  these  he  can  escape  if  he  takes  our 
advice. 

Now  that  we  have  been  drawn  into  the  always-interest- 
ing subject  of  marriage,  let  us  look  briefly  at  the  advan- 
tages a  man  has  who  in  his  profession  is  self-supporting, 
and  who  marries  the  daughter  of  a  man  in  merely  self- 
supporting  circumstances,  from  whom  he  can  expect  little 
more  then  or  after  than  a  respectable  outfit  for  the  wife. 
They  start  out  in  about  equal  circumstances,  for  it  is  now 
the  custom  in  respectable  society  to  give  daughters  educa- 


72  ABOUT   MAIiiniNG    EICH. 

tion,  which  in  many  cases  is  exiaensive,  and  may  have  some 
accomplishment  which  adds  greatly  to  the  home  enjoyment. 
And  we  will  suppose  the  young  woman  to  be  also  competent 
to  manage  the  house,  and  to  bring  up  her  children.  Thus, 
at  the  start,  their  conditions  seem  to  be  about  equal. 

But  although  the  wife  may  perform  her  part  of  tlie 
duties  of  the  two  with  as  much  zeal  and  capacity  as  he, 
yet  he  is  directly  the  bread  winner  of  the  family,  and  he 
assumes  the  honors  and  supremacy  of  such  a  providence, 
and  she  accords  it  to  him.  If  they  are  prosperous  and 
gather  property,  he  has  the  credit  of  it  all,  although  she 
gives  equal  energy  and  capacity  to  that  part  of  the  business 
of  the  family  which  is  in  her  province.  And  the  niauage- 
meut  of  the  household  is  always  an  important  factor,  being 
that  by  which  men  imjDrove  their  circumstances.  But  the 
man  assumes  that  he  did  all  in  the  gaining  of  the  property, 
and  that  all  is  his  by  virtue  of  creation,  and  he  assumes  to 
stand  to  her  in  the  relation  of  a  benefactor,  and  as  con- 
ferring upon  her  riches  which  she  was  not  born  to. 

And  such  is  the  meekness  of  woman,  bowed  down  by 
ages  of  subjection  to  the  despotism  of  man,  that  she  readily 
accords  all  this  to  him,  and  honors  him  as  her  benefactor, 
and  thinks  herself  a  fortunate  dependent.  Therefore,  in- 
asmuch as  man's  nature  requires  that  the  wife  shall  be 
subject  to  him,  shall  look  up  to  him  as  the  superior  being, 
shall  think  that  all  she  has  is  given  by  his  bounty,  and 
that  the  humble  service  of  her  life  is  too  little  for  his  good- 
ness, he  can  have  much  more  of  this  incense  of  worship 
burned  under  his  nose  by  marrying  a  girl  of  his  own  con- 
dition as  to  property. 

If  any  other  young  men,  or  men  of  any  age,  are  want- 
ing advice  as  to  marriage,  we  can  off  hand  serve  out  to 
them  as  exhaustively  as  in  the  above,  if  they  make  due 
application. 


XIY. 
"WHAT  TO  DO. 

"how  shall  a  youno  man  cleanse  his  ways?" 
TO  THE  editor: 

BEING  a  reader  of  your  paper  I  take  the  liberty  of 
asking  you  a  question.  What  shall  I  do  with  my- 
self? I  am  nearly  thirty-three,  without  trade  or  profession, 
have  done  some  little  honest  work  in  the  past  twelve  years, 
but  have  been  more  of  a  C.  d'l.  than  anything  else. 
Have  drank  a  good  deal  of  whisky,  am  an  inveterate  to- 
bacco cliewer  (seem  to  have  these  tastes  inborn  in  me),  and 
have  been  and  am  now  of  no  account  in  the  world.  I  am 
tired  of  this  way  of  living.  I  have  no  home  nor  home 
friends  to  go  to;  all  are  gone  from  me.  Tell  me,  do  you 
think  it  is  as  Colonel  Ingersoll  says,  "no  hereafter"?  If  I 
could  bring  myself  to  believe  this  I  could  solve  that  ques- 
tion. What  shall  I  do  with  myself?  very  quickly.  I,  how- 
ever, can  not. 

This  is  an  earnest  inquiry  on  my  part.  I  know  noth- 
ing, and  can  do  nothing  that  I  know  of.  Instead  of  giving 
me  a  trade  or  profession  my  parents  let  me  go  into  the 
army  in  early  youth,  where  I  learned  nothing  good,  much 
evil,  and  was  badly  hurt  twice.  Will  you  kindly  give  me 
your  opinion?  Tired. 

You  have  a  heavy  case  against  your  parents  who  let  you 
grow  up  without  training  you  to  earn  a  living,  against  a 
system  of  schooling  which  only  disqualifies  for  this,  and, 
we  suspect,  against  your  jiarents  for  begetting  you  with  a 
depraved  appetite  for  spirits  and  tobacco.  The  abandoned 
way  in  which  people  beget  children  with  their  own  debased 
natures,  and  propagate  beings  who  can  be  only  worthless, 

73 


74  WHAT  TO   DO. 

is  a  lack  of  principle  wnicli  is  appalling.  Yet  tliey  pretend 
a  doing  of  God  service  in  this  indulgence  of  their  own 
conscienceless  passions.  But,  unhappily,  you  can't  indict 
your  parents  for  bringing  you  into  the  world.  And  if  you 
could,  while  it  would  be  a  warning  to  others  it  would  not 
help  your  case. 

Your  case  is  bad;  the  only  gleam  of  a  chance  is  that  you 
feel  it,  and  want  a  change.  The  "no  hereafter''  has  no 
relief  that  is  available  to  you;  for  it  appears  that,  while 
your  parents  gave  you  nothing  to  helj^  you  to  get  a  living, 
they  instilled  into  you  a  superstition  that  there  is  another 
life,  in  which  peoi^le  are  called  to  account.  This  will  keep 
you  from  seeking  rest  in  that  way,  and  will  compel  you  to 
play  out  the  play.  And,  anyhow,  to  give  in  at  thirty-three 
as  a  failure  seems  pitifully  weak.  Of  course  life  is  a  failure 
at  last.  The  fact  is  that  no  sooner  does  one  get  well  agoing 
than  he  has  to  up  and  die  makes  it  a  mocking  failure;  but 
it  is  no  disgrace  to  be  carried  off  by  the  universal  fate  after 
having  bravely  played  the  game. 

You  are  too  old  to  learn  a  trade,  even  if  our  enlightened 
trades— like  Saturn  devouring  his  progeny,  or  a  sow  her 
own  litter — had  not  so  perfected  their  system  that  no  one 
has  a  chance  to  learn  a  trade  well.  You  might  become  a 
quack  lawyer  or  doctor,  but  you  would  have  to  be  a  knave  to 
succeed.  Your  superstition  as  to  the  hereafter  is  one  quali- 
fication for  a  preacher,  but  whisky  drinking  subjects  a 
preacher  to  uncharitable  comment.  The  trade  of  editor  is 
one  that  any  jack  can  take  up,  but  for  that  reason  there 
are  many  who  have  tlie  gift,  and  unfortunately  the  number 
of  papers  does  not  increase'.  The  undertaker's  trade  seems 
not  laborious,  and  not  likely  to  go  out  of  fashion,  but  it 
requires  a  solemn  face  for  the  occasions,  and,  what  is  not 
so  easy,  capital. 

Perhaps  if  you  had  an  object  you  could  drop  either 


WHAT  TO    DO.  '  75 

wliit-ky  or  tobacco.  Tobacco  is  nasty.  It  makes  a  man  a 
spouting  cesspool,  but  it  is  thought  less  liable  than  whisky 
drinking  to  be  carried  to  the  destructive  degree,  and  it  is 
not  so  expensive  a  habit.  Suppose  you  drop  whisky.  One 
would  tliiuk  that  tobacco  makes  the  mouth  so  nasty  that 
the.chewer  would  not  care  to  drink  whisky. 

You  are  footloose — no  home,  no  home  friends  who  care 
for  you.  You  are  free  from  all  but  yourself,  and  are  but 
thirty-three — time  enough  to  make  a  career.  You  are 
young  enough  to  take  Horace  Greeley's  standing  advice,  and 
go  West,  but  not  to  go  where  he  sent  men  to  waste  their 
lives  in  irrigating  arid  land. 

Go  Northwest!  Go  to  the  northern  parallels  if  you 
want  to  go  where  human  energies  are  highest  and  enter- 
prise most  vigorous.  On  the  line  of  the  Northern  Pacific 
Railroad,  in  a  good  climate,  you  can  preempt  160  acres  of 
land  as  productive  as  any  in  the  world,  in  a  region  where 
a  tide  of  the  best  emigration  is  fast  bringing  all  the  insti- 
tutions of  civilization,  and  with  your  experience  in  rough- 
ing it,  and  what  you  know  of  work,  you  can,  by  your  own 
muscle  have  within  ten  years  a  farm  and  a  home,  and  be 
one  of  the  lords  of  creation,  as  independent  as  any  man. 
Go  Northwest,  young  man,  and  regenerate  yourself! 


XV. 

THE   CHICAGO    MARRIAGE   DISABILITY. 

AGtAIK  the  iron  of  man's  tyranny  has  been  driven 
home  to  woman's  soul.  Again  has  he  shown  that 
even  his  tender  mercies  in  enlarging  her  sphere  are  devices 
to  draw  her  into  ambuscades,  where  her  disabilities  will  be 
sprung  upon  her  with  more  crushing  effect.  Again  is  the 
proof  repeated  that  the  rights  of  woman  can  not  be  safely 
trusted  to  man's  magnanimity,  aud  that  if  she  would  be 
free  she  must  have  the  ballot  in  her  own  hand  to  strike 
the  blow.  In  Chicago — that  metropolis  of  sin — was  the 
sledgehammer  swung  which  again  drove  to  its  ancient 
home  this  sharp  iron,  by  a  resolution  of  the  Board  of 
Education,  that  if  a  woman  teacher  shall  marry,  that  act 
shall  be  taken  as  resignation  of  her  place.  Fitly  was  it  in 
Chicago  that  a  woman  suffragist,  whose  name  is  lost  in  the 
vagueness  of  tradition,  said  that  she  wailed  when  she 
brought  one  more  unfortunate  female  into  the  world. 

This  political  decree  that  marriage  is  a  disability  to 
woman,  saps  the  very  foundation  of  woman's  rights;  em- 
braces principles  that  lie  beneath  the  fountains  of  the 
undercurrents  of  things;  embraces  the  underpinning  of 
the  framework  of  society;  embraces  the  existence  of  the 
relation  of  marriage;  embraces  all  that  is  enibraceable  in 
woman.  If  marriage  disqualifies  her  for  a  teacher  of  the 
public  school,  then  it  disqualifies  her  for  all  other  political 
offices,  most  of  which  have  duties  which  can  less  make 
allowance  for  woman's  occasions  than  the  office  of  teacher 
of  children.  Also  it  disqualifies  her  for  the  political 
duties  which  are  imposed  with  suffrage;  for  eternal  vigil- 

76 


THE   CHICAGO   MAllRIAGE    DISABILITY.  77 

ance  in  tiie  voter  is  the  price  of  liberty  to  the  people  and 
occasional  neglect  of  caucus,  convention,  canvass  and 
election  might  let  the  country  slip. 

Alike  does  this  monstrous  decree  declare  that  marriage 
disqualifies  her  to  be  a  judge,  or  lawyer,  or  doctor,  or 
minister,  or  editor;  for  all  these  have  functions  which 
can  no  more  wait  upon  occasion  than  teaching  the  young. 
And  so  it  does  for  most  kinds  of  business  and  of  labor; 
for  these  can  no  more  allow  periodical  or  uncertain  vaca- 
tions than  the  office  of  a  teacher.  Thus  does  it  logically 
shut  up  all  avenues  of  self-support  to  woman  unless  she 
consents  to  celibacy.  We  say  all;  for  no  adequate  incen- 
tive is  left  to  woman  to  qualify  herself  for  any  place  re- 
quiring skill  or  education  if  she  is  to  be  cut  off  by  marry- 
ing. The  reasons  upon  which  this  decree  is  justified 
reach  into  the  depths  of  woman's  nature,  and  arraign  the 
holy  state  of  marriage,  besides  pulling  out  the  underpin- 
ning of  morals. 

First  is  the  pretense  that  the  maternal  function  will 
disable  her  for  teaching.  This  is  cruelty  put  in  the  guise 
of  tenderness.  But  even  if  this  were  true,  would  it  not 
be  time  enough  when  she  had  started  the  maternal  func- 
tion. The  rule  that  the  woman  teacher  who  maternizes 
shall  be  taken  as  having  resigned  would  be  more  rational. 
There  is  a  saying  about  counting  uuhatched  chickens. 
With  the  development  of  civilization  the  maternity  busi- 
ness diminishes.  The  lower  animals  propagate  most. 
Fecundity  declines  with  elevation  of  species.  Maternity 
is  kept  within  bounds,  and  does  not  inexorably  follow  mar- 
riage. Sufficient  is  the  evil  for  the  day.  Our  school 
boards  need  not  form  themselves  into  boards  of  mid  wives. 

But  we  deny  that  maternity  disqualifies  a  teacher.  The 
theory  runs  counter  to  that  upon  wliich  women  are  pre- 
ferred for  teachers  of  the  young,  because  of  their  more 


78  THE   CHICAGO   MARRIAGE   DISABILITY. 

sympathetic  and  tender  nature.  This  nature  is  apt  to  be 
hitent  until  maternity  rouses  it,  and  even  to  grow  to  a  sub- 
acidity  if  left  too  long  latent.  This  decree  disqualifies 
woman  by  that  which  is  her  special  qualification  for  train- 
ing the  young.  We  have  read  in  woman  suffrage  speeches 
by  men  whose  nature  is  as  mild  as  if  their  veins  were  filled 
with  skim  milk  instead  of  animal  blood,  that  the  failure 
of  our  political  system  is  because  exclusive  male  suffrage 
has  shut  out  the  "mother  element";  that  the  lack  of  this 
mammary  quality  had  left  our  politics  without  the  lactation 
of  human  kindness;  had  kept  them  farrow,  as  it  were,  and 
so  they  had  degenerated.  But  here  is  an  unnatural  school 
board  decreeing  that  the  "  mother  element  "  shall  be  ex- 
cluded even  from  the  training  of  children.  If  such  people 
had  their  way  they  would  have  all  mankind  brought  up  by 
hand. 

The  next  reason  is  that  the  man  absorbs  the  wife's  mind, 
and  thereby  disqualifies  her  for  the  office  of  a  teacher.  To 
the  married  in  general  there  is  a  touch  of  humor  in  this. 
Where  is  the  man  who  will  say  that  he  absorbs  his  wife's  mind 
and  will  say  it  to  her  face?  All  the  married  agree  that 
marriage  brings  in  a  sober  view  of  life's  realities,  and  makes 
man  and  wife  more  capable  of  dealing  with  them.  To  the 
superficial  view  some  show  of  reason  might  be  alleged  of 
the  courtship  stage;  but  even  in  this  we  may  appeal 
to  universal  observation  and  experience  to  state  if  the  head 
which  is  most  thrown  out  of  level  by  this  delirious 
stage  be  not  the  man's?  The  term  coquette  is  feminine  by 
common  acceptation,  because  woman  only  has  the  coolness  _ 
to  practice  this  art.  The  girl  receives  in  composure  the 
question  whose  popping  puts  the  man  into  a  ferment.  She 
parades  the  engagement,  while  he  is  shy  of  it.  At  the 
marriage  performance,  he  has  to  have  the  vows  dictated  to 
him  in  stops  of  three  words,  and  his  repeating  is  inaudible. 


THE  CHICAGO  MARRIAGE   DISABILITY.  'J'O 

while  she  speaks  tliem  up  witli  a  clear  confident  voice,  and 
evidently  could  recite  the  whole  without  prompting. 

Thus  do  all  the  signs  show  that  the  man's  head  is  the 
one  most  turned,  and  his  the  life  that  is  most  divided  by 
marriage.  The  common  error  in  this  has  arisen  by  not 
drawing  the  line  in  human  motives  and  qualities.  To  the 
superficial  view  the  wife  appears  to  have  most  fidelity  in 
love;  hence  the  common  notion  that  love  takes  more  com- 
plete possession  of  her  being.  There  are  some  pretty  lines 
about  man's  love  being  a  thing  apart  from  his  life,  while  it 
is  woman's  whole  existence.  This  is  very  nice  for  woman 
to  say,  but  the  real  competitive  trial  can  not  be  made,  be- 
cause they  can  not  be  put  into  the  same  conditions.  Who 
can  tell  how  much  love's  completer  possession  of  the 
woman  is  owing  to  the  circumstance  that  he  can  take  the 
liberty  to  choose?  Who  can  tell  how  far  limitation  goes 
for  constancy?  It  is  a  line  of  investigation  which  it  would 
not  be  wise  to  pursue.  But  this  has  gone  far  enough  to 
prove  that  the  notion  that  marriage  disables  woman  more 
than  man  for  other  functions  is  wildly  contrary  to  the  facts 
of  human  existence. 

Another  reason  is  that  the  teacher  who  marries  has  a 
man  to  support  her,  and  therefore  should  give  place  to 
another  woman  to  support  herself.  This,  like  all  of  man's 
views  of  woman,  is  the  reverse  of  the  rule  that  is  applied 
to  men;  for  a  wife  and  children  are  accepted  as  claims  to 
public  place,  and  when  there  is  an  economical  curtailment 
of  public  employes,  the  single  men  have  to  go  first.  But 
is  not  the  very  assumption  that  the  man  always  supports 
the  wife,  itself  a  part  of  man's  everlasting  injustice  to 
woman?  There  are  many  men  supported  by  wives; 
many  more  standing  about  the  streets  and  living  on  their 
parents  who  need  wives  to  sujiport  them.  And  if  it  is 
thought  that  a  man  who  has  a  public  place  ought  to  take 


80  THE   CHICAGO   MARRIAGE   DISABILITY. 

a  wife  to  support  and  to  add  to  the  population,  why  not 
the  duty  of  a  woman  in  similar  place?  If  she  supports  a 
man  by  it,  and  adds  to  the  census,  is  it  not  the  same  as  if 
he  had  the  office  and  supported  her? 

Could  anything  but  ages  of  the  practice  of  injustice  to 
woman  make  men  incapable  of  perceiving  that  woman  has 
as  good  a  right  to  take  a  man  to  support  as  man  a  woman? 
And  is  not  this  injustice  most  blind  when  men  apply  it  in 
such  a  way  as  to  cut  off  their  own  lordly  sex  from  this 
means  of  support?  The  subject  is  as  inexhaustible  as 
woman,  but  we  trust  that  we  have  said  enough  to  show 
that  the  Chicago  School  Board's  rule,  which  ejects  woman 
from  the  school  if  she  follows  the  order  of  nature,  is 
founded  on  false  assumptions,  which  if  admitted  would 
undermine  the  social  fabric. 


XVI. 

SCIENTIFIC-SPOTS  IN  DOMESTIC 
ANIMALS. 

AN  interesting  paper  on  color-marks  in  domestic  animals, 
by  Professor  William  II.  Brewer,  of  Yale  College,  Avas 
read  on  Thursday  in  Section  B.  of  the  Congress  of  Scientists. 
It  related  to  white  spots  in  animals.  The  author  has 
observed  that  horses  have  more  white  feet  on  the  left  side 
than  the  right;  that  the  foot  most  often  white  is  the  left 
hind,  and  least  often  the  right  fore;  that  where  but  two 
feet  are  white  they  are  most  often  the  two  hind,  and  in 
such  cases  the  majority  have  the  most  white  on  the  left; 
that  if  but  one  foot  is  white,  it  is  oftenest  the  left,  whether 
hind  or  fore;  if  three  feet  are  white,  two  are  oftenest  on 
the  left  side. 

In  spotted  horses,  if  they  have  merely  a  white  spot,  it 
is  oftenest  on  the  left  side;  Avhen  they  have  many  spots,  the 
amount  of  white  is  greatest  on  the  left.  Mules  are  rarely 
spotted,  and  the  author  never  saw  one  with  white  feet. 
The  white  spots  of  horned  cattle  are  not  so  regularly  dis- 
posed, and  the  author  has  not  observed  enough  to  say  that 
their  left  feet  w^ere  more  often  white  than  the  right,  but 
thought  it  probable.  Likewise  in  dogs;  but  the  right  and 
left  in  dogs  is  strongly  shown  by  their  carrying  the  tail  on 
the  left  side. 

The  same  is  true  of  swine  as  regards. color,  but  the  tail 
is  carried  on  either  side,  according  to  the  fancy  of  the 
of  the  wearer.  From  all  this  the  author  thought  it 
probable  that  there  is  more  white  on  the  left  side  of  all 
domestic  animals.  He  had  not  had  opportunity  to  observe 
Avild  animals,  except  about  sixty  skunks,  of  whom  a 
6  81 


82  SCIENTIFIC — SPOTS   IN   DOMESTIC   ANIMALS. 

majority  had  most  white  on  the  left  side.  From  all  of  this 
the  author,  reasoning  in  a  scientific  manner,  from  effect 
to  cause,  concluded  that  the  greater  quantity  of  white  spots 
on  the  left  side  is  because  of  the  inferior  strength  of  the 
left  side,  which  can  not  so  well  put  forth  pronounced  color. 

The  subject  is  interesting,  and  tlie  conclusion  far  reach- 
ing. If  white  is  caused  by  inferior  strength,  then  the 
African  theory  may  be  true,  that  Adam  and  Eve  were 
black,  and  that  the  white  skin  is  the  product  of  degen- 
eracy. Darwin,  however,  finds  that  the  brilliant  plumage 
of  the  males  of  feathered  animals  is  developed  by  love  and 
fashion;  by  the  gallant  desire  of  the  males  to  attract  the  admi- 
ration of  the  females;  this  being  the  opposite  of  the  social 
influences  in  the  human  race.  May  not  fashion  develop 
white  spots  in  animals,  fostered  by  the  same  amiable 
desire  to  make  themselves  mutually  attractive. 

How  shall  we  explain  the  fact  cited  that  the  hind  foot 
of  the  horse  is  oftener  white  than  the  fore  foot,  when  they 
who  have  come  into  contact  have  conceived  the  impression 
that  the  chief  strength  of  the  horse  is  in  his  hind  feet? 
This  theory  would  satisfactorily  explain  the  fact  that  the 
mule  never  has  white  hind  feet,  but  it  leaves  something 
for  science  yet  to  clear  up  in  the  matter  of  the  more  fre- 
quent white  on  the  hind  feet  of  horses.  And  if  the  Infe- 
rior strength  of  the  left  side  be  the  cause,  and  the  effect  be 
the  inability  to  put  forth  decided  color,  shall  we  have  to 
conclude  that  gray  and  white  horses  are  of  inferior  vigor? 

A  very  scientific  breeder  of  cattle,  named  Jacob,  found 
by  experiment  that  imagination  in  domestic  animals  had 
great  effect  in  producing  spots.  This  in  a  sort  corrobo- 
rates Darwin's  theory  of  the  development  of  gorgeous 
plumage  in  birds  by  their  desire  to  please.  Cold  scientific 
inquiry  is  prone  to  forget  that  animals  have  consciousness 
or  observation.  If  these  be  conceded,  then  it  must  be 
allowed  that  they  can  not  be  unaware  of  objects  so  con- 


SCIE>rTIFIC — SPOTS    IN    DOMESTIC    ANIMALS.  83 

spicuons  as  white  spots,  nor  unconscious  of  tlie  effect. 
This  would  lend  to  desire,  and  desire,  as  Darwin  shows,  to 
development.  And  this  observation,  desire  and  develop- 
ment would  be  in  the  line  of  fashion.  And  our  race  need 
not  bo  told  that  fashion  has  right  and  left  sides,  such  for 
example  as  our  parting  the  hair  on  the  left  side. 

Can  the  habit  of  the  dog  to  carry  his  tail  on  the  left 
side  be  received  as  evidence  of  the  inferior  strength  on 
that  side?  It  seems  to  impose  the  greater  weight  on  the 
weaker  member.  Does  he  do  it  save  on  a  trot,  when  he 
throws  his  right  side  forward,  and  consequently  puts  the 
tail  over  to  the  left  as  a  sort  of  rudder  to  balance  things? 
As  to  swine,  that  breeding  which  increases  adipose  and 
rounds  out  the  marketable  parts  diminishes  the  growth  of 
the  tail  so  that  it  seems  to  curl  up  from  insufficiency,  and 
its  relative  weight  becomes  so  small  that  its  being  carried 
on  either  side  would  be  of  little  scientific  significance. 

When  the  horse  lies  down,  he  lies  on  the  right  side,  in 
general.  This  exposes  his  left  to  the  weather.  Hair  of 
white  color  is  held  to  be  a  better  protection  against  cold 
than  of  dark  color.  May  not  his  greater  quantity  of 
Avhite  spots  on  the  left  side  be  nature's  development  for 
his  protection  from  cold?  Or,  if  the  cause  of  the  pro- 
duction of  white  spots  be  fancy  and  fashion,  they  would 
naturally  be  on  that  side  kept  io  the  view,  like  as  a 
woman,  when  she  sits  down,  does  it  in  such  a  manner  as 
to  fetch  her  train  to  the  front  view. 

That  view  seems  more  pleasant  and  philosophical  which 
concedes  most  intelligence  and  development  to  the  animals; 
therefore  is  the  theory  that  white  spots  are  a  development 
from  the  taste,  fashion,  and  love  of  the  beautiful  in  the 
animals  themselves  the  more  in  accord  with  respect  for  the 
general  excellence  of  creation.  Yet  that  which  is  most 
agreeable  to  our  minds  should  not  stand  in  the  way  of  the 
absolute  demonstrations  of  science. 


XVII. 
A  LIFT  FOR  THE  DOWN-TRODDEN  SEX. 

SENATOR  PENDLETON  builded  wiser  than  he  knew 
for  the  women,  and  the  down-trodden  have  quickly 
caught  his  civil  service  reform  structure  by.  the  horns,  and 
have  turned  them  to  their  own  lifting  up.  Or,  if  he  saw 
it  all,  the  more  glory  is  due  to  him.  The  strong-minded 
should  make  him  their  candidate  for  President,  instead  of 
the  gay  deceiver,  Benjamin  F.  Butler,  or  the  loose-minded 
Senator  Blair.  Mr.  Pendleton's  reform  bill  is  to  select 
persons  for  the  Government  clerkships  upon  their  qualifi- 
cations, as  tried  by  competitive  examination  in  book  knowl- 
edge. There  is  no  sex  in  merit,  and  no  merit  in  sex. 
Breathes  there  a  man  so  soulless  as  to  plead  to  have  women, 
excluded  from  competitive  examinations  which  are  to  select 
persons  for  the  public  service  solely  on  the  ground  of 
merit? 

Men  who  should  ask  this  would  subject  themselves  to 
the  jeers  of  the  world  for  its  confession  of  inferiority  and 
timidity.  If  man  can  not  stand  the  test  when  put  by  the 
side  of  woman  on  his  mental  muscle,  he  must  stick  to  those 
vocations  in  which  mental  furniture  is  not  required.  As 
the  race-course  brings  to  the  highest  test  the  fitness  of  the 
blood-horse  to  propagate  his  kind,  so  the  competitive  exam- 
inations will  bring  to  the  highest  test  the  qualifications  of 
persons  to  be  appointed  to  office.  A  high  pedigree  is  a 
great  thing  to  the  horse.  Man  is  the  only  animal  in  whom 
the  science  of  elevation  by  selection  is  abandoned.  But  if 
the  horse  of  high  pedigree  fails  in  the  competitive  test,  he 
is  cast  off  as  a  chance  atavism  of  a  vulgar  strain  in  a  remote 

84 


A   LIFT  FOR  THE   DOAVN-TRODDEN   SEX.  85 

ancestor.  So  man  may  think  it  a  superior  thing  to  be  born 
a  male;  but  wlien  lie  comes  to  the  test  of  competitive  exam- 
ination with  woman,  his  male  quality  will  not  save  him, 
and  he  must  stand  or  fall  on  liis  merits. 

The  strong-minded  women  have  quickly  caught  on  to 
this  principle,  and  have  put  into  the  platform  of  their 
recent  annual  Convention  a  demand  that  these  examina- 
tions shall  be  what  is  professed,  a  test  of  merit,  and  tluit 
there  shall  be  no  exclusion  of  sex  from  the  trial.  In  this 
is  no  plea  for  man's  chivalrous  protection  of  the  weaker 
sex;  no  asking  for  any  consideration  because  they  are 
women;  no  plea  that  man  should  give  up  to  woman  the 
light  and  indoor  employments,  and  take  to  himself  the 
rougher;  but  a  square  demand  that  they  shall  be  admitted 
to  an  equal  test  of  qualifications  by  competitive  examina- 
tions, in  which  no  favor  shall  be  shown  to  sex. 

Man  can  not  deny  this.  He  may  complacently  enjoy 
for  ages  the  condition  which  has  excluded  women,  upon 
the  ground  of  their  inability;  but  when  the  affair  comes  in 
such  shape  that  he  has  to  take  offensive  action  to  rule  that 
woman  shall  be  excluded  from  a  comparative  test  of  her 
abilities,  he  can  not  do  a  thing  which  would  confess  his 
own  inability.  Women  must  be  admitted  to  these  exam- 
inations, and  must  be  treated  by  Government  on  their 
merits,  as  provided  by  its  own  method.  The  world  would 
scoff  at  man's  weakness  which  feared  to  meet  woman  on 
equal  terms. 

Need  it  be  said  that  woman  has  never  before  had  such 
a  chance  as  this?  Never  before  has  she  had  a  fair  trial  with 
man  on  her  abilities.  The  introduction  of  women  to  Gov- 
ernment clerkships  during  the  war,  upon  the  ground  that 
men  were  wanted  for  the  army,  Avas  not  a  compliment  to 
woman;  rather  it  was  a  reflection  on  her  inability.  And 
the  seeming  tender  mercies  of  this  admission  of  women  tp 


86  A   LIFT   FOR   THE   DOWN-TRODDEN   SEX. 

the  offices  have  been  very  cruel  in  many  things.  The  mode 
of  appointment  by  favor,  while  in  the  main  it  has  given 
places  to  the  deserving,  is  charged  with  finding  places  for 
many  because  of  their  improper  relations  with  men  of  influ- 
ence; and  this,  magnified  bv  renort,  has  had  a  cruel  effect 
on  the  general  repute. 

The  strait  gate  of  admission  by  merit  will  reform  all 
that,  and  will  give  to  the  women  in  the  public  service  their 
just  standing.  They  who  reflect  on  the  cruelty  of  giving 
a  bad  reputation  to  thousands  of  worthy  women,  as  a  class, 
because  of  the  improper  relations  which  influence  the  ap- 
pointment of  a  few,  can  appreciate  the  magnitude  of  the 
relief  which  can  be  given  by  this  act  of  simple  justice. 
Instead  of  a  doubtful  repute,  will  be  an  elevation  of  stand- 
ing, upon  the  firm  foundation  of  superior  qualifications, 
officially  established.  Is  there  not  great  significance  in  the 
fact  that  men  dislike  this  test  of  ability,  and  women  de- 
mand it?  Women  call  for  a  fair  field  and  no  favor,  and 
men  shun  it. 

Tliis  reform  will  make  the  public  service  honorable  to 
women;  whereas,  it  is  not  now  honorable.  The  elevation 
of  this  will  elevate  woman's  cause  in  general.  It  will  have 
a  powerful  infiuence  in  making  education  appreciated; 
whereas,  the  very  abundance  of  free  schooling  makes  it 
little  valued.  It  will  make  better  education  necessary  to 
men;  whereas,  now  the  girls  are  better  educated  tlian  the 
boys  of  the  same  social  level.  The  boys  drop  out  of  school 
early  to  find  some  business  which  will  furnish  money  for 
indulgence  of  extravagant  habits,  and  this,  in  the  most,  is 
the  end  of  their  education;  whereas,  the  girls  continue 
through  the  course,  and  then  keep  up  the  pursuit  through 
literary  associations  of  various  sorts. 

Yet,  when  they  come  together  in  society,  these  girls  of 
superior  education  have  to  come  down  to  the  twaddle  of 


A   LIFT   FOR   THE    DOWN-TliODDEN    SEX.  87 

young  men  who  know  notliingliiglicrtlian  the  toAvn  gossip, 
all  of  which  is  about  persons.  This  is  the  reason  for  the 
modern  fashion  of  what  are  called  dove  parties — dinner 
parties,  lunch  parties,  coffee  parties,  and  tea  parties  for 
girls  alone.  Only  by  this  sc})aration  can  their  superior 
culture  be  of  any  account.  In  mixed  parties,  they  have 
to  come  down  to  the  mental  level  of  youths  whose  culture 
ceased  in  early  years.  For  this  situation  dancing  is  the 
great  social  solvent — an  elegant  j)leasure  in  itself,  when  not 
too  familiar  with  the  person,  and  asocial  necessity  to  bridge 
the  educational  chasm  between  the  sexes. 

When  Government  shall  appreciate  education  by  making 
it  a  qualification  for  office,  it  will  be  better  ajipreciated  by 
the  people.  When  a  just  system  of  admission  to  the  public 
service  shall  give  to  woman's  superior  education  its  due 
rank  in  the  public  service,  the  uneducated  men  will  per- 
ceive that  they  have  dropped  down  to  an  inferior  political 
and  social  rank,  and  that  education  is  requisite  to  catch  up. 
Thus  the  civil  service  reform  -will  be  a  great  power  for 
justice  to  women.  Through  the  chance  which  this  will 
give  them,  it  will  be  a  powerful  influence  for  the  better 
education  of  men.  And  thus  is  Mr.  Pendleton  the  best 
political  benefactor  of  woman  that  has  yet  arisen. 


XVIII. 

BLIGHTED  MEK 

WHAT  more  blighting  calamity  can  come  upon  a 
sensible  man  than  to  find  that  he  has  married  a 
fool?  Who  has  not  seen  instances  of  this  in  the  married 
that  have  reached  the  age  in  which  the  girlish  manners  and 
prettiness,  which  concealed  to  the  englamoured  man  her 
lack  of  common  sense,  have  gone,  but  have  left  no  mental 
growth  to  supply  their  place?  The  instances,  unhappily, 
are.  not  infrequent  in  society  in  which  it  is  plain  that  the 
realization  has  slowly  come  over  the  man  that  he  has  yoked 
himself  to  a  person  of  this  description.  He  is  a  blighted 
being,  plainly  revealing  by  his  manner  that  to  him  the 
question  whether  life  is  worth  living  has  been  solved,  yet 
forced  to  live  by  the  responsibilities  he  has  assumed — forced 
to  live  by  the  clog  he  has  fastened  ujaon  himself,  and  by 
the  consequences  he  has  entailed  upon  other  beings;  drag- 
ging his  weary  way  through  life;  ever  forced  to  wear  a  mask 
and  play  a  part;  following  his  profession  or  trade  without 
ambition;  without  energy;  a  sad  faced  man,  as  if  all  hope 
in  life  had  fled,  and  yet,  perhaps,  with  a  chirping  wife;  a 
man  without  the  consolation  of  hope  in  the  future  state, 
because  it  must  be  clouded  by  the  promise  which  preachers 
make  of  the  reunion  of  those  who  were  one  here  below. 

The  blight  is  saddest  in  its  aspect  when  the  married 
have  reached  middle  age  and  beyond;  by  which  time  it  has 
dried  uj)  manhood's  courage  and  energy,  also  his  bodily 
vigor,  and  his  face  and  manner  liave  settled  into  that  hope- 
less expression  which,  alas!  is  too  familiar  in  society.  But 
to  have  married  a  fool  is  not  in  our  law  a  cause  for  divorce 

88 


BLIGHTED  MEN.  89 

to  the  man.  It  maybe  to  the  woman  through  his  inability 
to  support  her.  But  to  the  man  there  is  no  way  save  to 
endure.  The  law  assumes  that  he  was  a  responsible  being 
when  he  took  the  marriage  infection — a  violent  assumption 
— and  it  holds  him  body  and  soul  to  the  bond.  There  is 
no  honorable  way  of  relief.  To  seek  it  in  society  away 
from  his  own  fireside,  in  clubs,  politics,  card  parties,  and 
soon,  is  to  carry  with  him  everywhere  the  consciousness 
that  to  this  he  is  driven  by  a  lack  at  home,  and  to  bring 
him  home  feeling  more  deeply  that  lack. 

To  seek  consolation  in  the  friendship  of  other  women 
is  to  enter  the  path  of  unsanctified  love,  which  is  the  broad 
way  to  destruction,  and  which  makes  his  home  only  the 
more  unendurable,  besides  making  the  wife  miserable  for 
that  which  is  not  her  fault.  That  which  is  finely  called 
the  flowing  bowl  is  sometimes  resorted  to.  No  one  can 
have  the  heart  to  pronounce  harsh  judgment  on  the  man 
whose  despair  drives  him  to  this,  but  it  swiftly  destroys 
him,  and  it  visits  his  despair  for  that  which  was  his  own 
act  upon  his  innocent  wife  and  children  by  reducing  them 
to  want.  For  the  wife  is  not  to  blame  because  she  has  no 
sense,  and  unhappily  nature's  law  does  not  muke  fools 
impotent -to  propagate  their  species.  Therefore,  there  is 
no  way  for  the  manly  man  but  to  bear  the  consequences  of 
his  own  undoing;  to  travel  his  weaiy  journey  of  life  i)luckily 
to  the  end;  to  become  saintly  with  his  sadness,  and  to  do 
what  he  can  to  develop  the  minds  of  his  children  above  the 
dAvarfed  heritage  which  he  has  helped  to  impose  upon  them. 
Happily  he  can  find  encouraging  examples  for  this  effort. 

Knowing  the  nature  of  man,  and  how  imbecile  he  be- 
comes in  taking  on  love  and  marriage,  we  may  see  in  these 
sad  examples  remains  which  give  an  idea  of  the  charms 
which  caught  his  fancy,  and  blinded  him  to  her  mental 
vacuity.     She  was  very  young,  and  her  silliness  seemed 


90  BLIGHTED    MEN". 

sprightly  girlislmess.  The  talk  of  the  young  men  of 
society  is  so  largely  silly  that  he  may  not  have  sounded  her 
in  anything  beyond.  Perhaps  her  pudgy  figure  and  flabby 
face  show  that  in  girlhood  she  had  a  plumpness  and  fair- 
ness which  to  many  ardent  young  men  seem  to  contain  all 
that  is  desirable  in  woman.  Perhaps  she  had  a  develop- 
ment such  as  is  called  voluptuous,  whatever  that  may  be. 
The  Satan  of  sexual  passion  helped  to  blind  him.  She 
giggled,  and  was  chirrupy  with  small  talk  and  vivacioua 
exclamations;  she  danced  and  rode;  and  perhaps  he  talked 
as  silly  as  she,  and  never  gave  her  a  chance  to  show 
whether  she  had  any  sense.  Her  nonsense  then  pleased 
him.  He  was  very  green  and  not  overstocked  with  brains, 
and  what  he  had  were  not  called  for,  and  so  the  silly  he 
took  for  life  this  lump  of  she  silliness. 

But  his  time  for  mental  growth  had  just  begun.  Ap- 
plication to  a  profession,  to  trade,  contact  with  men  in 
affairs,  politics,  and  all  would  force  his  mind  to  expand  in 
spite  of  himself:  but  there  was  no  growth  in  her.  He 
began,to  eat  of  the  tree  of  knowledge  and  to  find  what  he 
had  done.  He  became  a  grave  man,  a  desponding,  gloomy 
man,  a  man  whose  dejected  aspect  advertised  that  he  had 
found  life  a  failure.  No  mind  can  stand  up  against  this 
incessant  domestic  drain,  and  so  his  was  dwarfed.  In  it 
all  he  had  the  objurgating  consciousness  that  it  was  tlie 
consequence  of  his  own  folly.  We  see  these  blighted  men 
going  about;  we  all  have  them  among  our  acquaintances; 
Ijut  their  fate  gives  no  wisdom  to  the  noble  army  of  youth 
who  are  rushing  to  stick  their  heads  into  the  noose,  and  so 
there  will  be  a  per|)etual  succession  of  these  blighted 
men. 


XIX. 

DEGENERACY  OF  KNIGHT  TEMPLAR 
HOOD 

THE  Knight  Templars  of  the  land  are  making  much 
ado  with  complaints  of  poor  entertainment  and  ex- 
tortionate charges  by  the  Chicago  inns,  restaurants,  bars, 
beer  halls,  and  so  on,  down  even  to  the  blacking  shiners, 
all  of  which  branches  of  subsistence,  they  say,  raised  their 
prices  on  the  recent  assembling  of  the  Knights  Templar 
at  that  city  of  the  lake  and  the  sea  serpent.  By  way  of 
aggravation  they  specify  that  many  of  the  Knights  Tem- 
plar took  wives  with  them,  and  had  bespoke  rooms;  but 
that  when  they  came  they  found  many  beds  in  a  room, 
and  Knight  and  Lady  Templar  had  to  be  separated  in  order 
that  many  individuals  might  be  tumbled  into  a  room;  for 
it  appears  that  a  promiscuous  tumbling  is  forbidden  by  the 
rules  of  the  Knight  Templar  order. 

The  degeneracy  of  modern  Knight  Templarhood  could 
hardly  be  set  forth  more  luridly  than  by  this  complaint  of 
innkeepers'  charges.  Was  the  real  Knight  Templar  ever 
known  to  pay  a  tavern  reckoning?  The  inn  keeper  who 
stuck  a  bill  at  him  would  stand  a  good  chance  to  have  the 
score  crossed  out  by  the  Knight  Templar's  mark  across  liis 
pate.  To  pay  was  left  to  the  common  and  popular.  Don 
Quixote  was  not  exactly  a  Kniglit  Templar,  but  a  Knight 
Errant,  a  still  higher  order;  for,  whereas  the  Knight  Tem- 
plar was  under  a  vow  to  rescue  the  Holy  Sepulcher  from 
the  followers  of  Mahomet,  when  convenient,  tlie  Kniglit 
Errant  was  devoted  to  the  righting  of  all  wrongs  whatso- 
ever, but  especially  to  the  succoring  of  distressed  damsels. 

91 


92  DEGENERACY   OF  KNIGHT  TEMPLARHOOD. 

It  is  true,  the  Knight  Templar  also  did  odd  jobs  of 
rescuing  distressed  damsels,  when  not  on  the  way  to  Jeru- 
salem to  oust  the  Paynims;  and  in  this  last,  like  the  great- 
est General  of  our  civil  war,  he  was  always  getting  ready 
to  move  but  never  moving.  There  was  always  a  lot  of 
succorable  damsels  for  the  adventurous  Knights,  and  if 
business  was  slack  they  now  and  then  carried  off  damsels 
themselves,  riding  a  pillion,  for  other  succorers,  to  keep 
trade  going.  But  the  Knights  Templar  and  Knights  Er- 
rant had  no  Ladies  Templar  and  Ladies  Errant.  Had  they 
these  behind,  they  could  not  follow  the  trade  of  rescuing 
distressed  damsels,  without  liability  to  domestic  infelicity, 
and  to  what  General  Scott  called  a  fire  in  the  rear.  For 
there  is  an  infirmity  in  a  wife's  nature — her  heritage  prob- 
ably from  Adam's  fall — that  will  not  stand  her  Knight's 
going  about  rescuing  distressed  damsels,  and  coming  nightly 
home  with  a  night  key. 

This  leads  to  a  further  digression  on  the  beautiful  term 
"damsel"  for  young  maidens,  used  in  the  Scriptures  and 
in  all  books  of  the  age  of  chivalry,  but  now  gone  out  of 
use  by  the  evil  association  of  ideas.  If  the  rescuing  Knight 
were  marriageable,  the  rescued  damsel  naturally  gave  her- 
self to  him  as  the  highest  reward  for  saving  her  honor. 
This  beautiful  custom  has  come  down  to  modern  times, 
and  modest  marriageable  men  have  hesitated  on  the  bank 
where  a  damsel  had  fallen  in,  because  diffidence  led  them 
to  think  such  a  generous  reward  too  great  for  so  trifling  a 
service.  Thus  the  term  damsel  became  associated  with  all 
its  consequences,  so  that  by  a  mental  process  it  came  to  ex- 
press the 'totality.  This  will  be  seen  further  along  by 
those  who  can  follow  an  intricate  mental  process. 

Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has  said,  in  amplification  of  the 
principle  that  "  correlatives  imply  one  another,'*  such  as 
that  ''  a  father  can  not  be  thought  of  without  thinking  of 


DEGEKERACY  OF  KISTIGHT  TEMPLARHOOD.  03 

a  child,"  nor  the  child  be  thought  of  without  thinking  of 
a  father:  "If  the  part  is  conceived  without  any  reference 
to  tlie  whole,  it  becomes  itself  a  whole — an  indejiendent 
entity — and  its  relations  to  existence  in  general  are  misap- 
prehended. Further,  the  size  of  the  part,  as  compared 
with  the  size  of  the  whole,  must  be  misapprehended  unless 
the  whole  is  not  only  recognized  as  including  it,  but  is 
figured  in  its  total  extent.  And  again,  the  position  which 
ihe  part  occupies  in  relation  to  other  jjarts,  can  not  be 
rightly  conceived  unless  there  is  some  conception  of  the 
Avhole  in  its  distribution  as  well  as  in  its  amount." 

Applying  this  metaphysical  process,  and  bearing  in 
mind  the  reward  which  the  Knight  could  not  honorably 
refuse  for  rescuing  the  damsel,  we  perceive  how  the  Avord 
damsel,  by  the  necessary  correlation  of  parts  to  the  whole, 
came  to  be  associated  with  the  Avhole  transaction,  and 
thus  brought  about  an  emphasis  on  each  syllable  of  the 
word,  to  express  the  Knight's  appreciation  of  the  reward 
that  had  crowned  his  chivalrous  adventure.  And  so,  by 
the  force  of  correlation  of  ideas,  this  beautiful  word, 
which  used  to  describe  the  sweetest  thing  in  creation, 
came  to  have  an  evil  sound,  and  went  out  of  use. 

The  necessary  totality  of  correlative  parts  brings  this 
paper  round  to  Don  Quixote,  the  model  of  knightly 
breeding,  and  to  the  incident  when  an  inn  keeper — a  Pot- 
ter Palmer  of  the  locality — called  upon  him  to  discharge 
the  reckoning,  as  he  had  mounted  Rozinante  to  depart. 
Don  Quixote  had  a  high  standard  of  chivalry,  but  withal 
he  was  an  exceedingly  rational  Knight  Errant,  and  instead 
of  whacking  the  innkeeper  over  the  head,  he  condescended 
to  reason  with  him,  and  to  lay  down  the  rights  of  Knights 
Errant.  He  pronounced  himself  excused  from  jiayment 
for  these  conclusive  reasons: 

*'For  I  can  not  act  contrary  to  the  law  of  Knights 


94  DEGENERACY   OF   KNIGHT  TEXIPLARHOOD. 

Errant,  of  whom  I  certainly  know,  liaving  hitherto  read 
nothing  to  the  contrary,  that  they  never  paid  for  lodging, 
or  anything  else,  in  an  inn  where  they  have  lain;  and 
that,  because  of  right  and  good  reason,  all  possible  accom- 
dation  is  due  to  them,  in  recompense  for  the  insufferable 
hardships  they  endure  in  quest  of  adventures,  by  night 
and  by  day,  in  winter  and  in  summer,  on  foot  and  on  horse- 
back, with  thirst  and  with  hunger,  with  heat  and  with 
cold,  subject  to  all  the  inclemencies  of  heaven,  and  to  all 
the  inconveniences  of  earth." 

If  the  true  Knight  Templar  ever  condescended  to  pay 
an  inn-keeper,  he  stopped  not  for  reckoning,  nor  did  the 
keeper  dare  to  face  him  with  a  score.  True  Knights  con- 
temned figures  and  reading  and  writing.  Every  thing  in 
the  inn  was  at  his  call,  and  when  he  mounted  his  horse  to 
sally  forth,  and  the  obsequious  inn-keeper  stood  uncovered, 
thankful  for  his  deliverance,  the  Knight  Templar,  per- 
haps, tossed  him  a  purse,  a  part  of  the  spoil  of  a  Saracen 
town,  or  of  a  loan  from  a  Jew,  ingratitude  for  leaving  him 
with  part  of  his  teeth  or  with  one  of  his  eyes  or  ears,  or 
for  delivering  him  from  hot  pincers,  or  some  of  those  com- 
plaints which  were  aj)t  to  break  out  in  a  rich  Jew  when 
Knights  Templar  were  short  of  ready  money. 

The  true  Knight  Templar  never  stooped  to  any  closer 
money  transaction  than  to  toss  a  purse.  But  the  modern 
degenerate  Knight  Templar  complains  of  imposition  from 
Chicago  innkeepers — of  poor  entertainment,  many  in  a 
bed  or  room,  poor  victuals,  and  extortionate  charges. 
Where  was  the  chivalry  which  belongs  to  their  name?  Gone 
where  twineth  the  woodbine.  Report  gives  20,000  of  them 
at  Chicago;  but  as  the  most  potent  weapon  of  the  Knights 
Templar,  as  of  some  most  promoted  generals,  was  the 
long  bow,  an  JiUowance  of  one-half  can  be  made,  and  still 
leave  enough  to  have  cleaned  out  Chicago,  brought  every 


LEGENEEACY  OF  KNIGnT  TEMPLAEHOOD.      95 

innkeeper  to  his  knees,  and  made  every  beer  jcrker  and 
bartender  glad  to  serve  them  free  as  the  ransom  of  their 
lives. 

But  the  Knight  Templar  is  not  what  he  was.  He  has 
a  Avife,  than  which  nothing  is  more  debilitatijig  to  the 
knightly  spirit.  A  nfotto  of  the  time  of  knighthood  was, 
"  Base  is  the  slave  who  pays.'^  The  modern  Knight  Tem- 
plar pays ;  worse,  he  pays  extortionate  prices  for  things  he 
don't  get.  He  lets  innkeepers,  bartenders,  beer  jerkers, 
"  Wienerwurst "  boys,  and  even  shiners,  impose  upon  him. 
He  is  packed  by  the  dozen  in  a  sleeping  apartment  like 
prisoners  in  a  barracks.  No  knightly  dignity  can  survive 
a  dozen  in  a  bedroom  or  three  in  a  bed.  The  real  Knight 
Templar  would  not  dishonor  his  sword  by  using  it  on  the 
ignobly  born,  but  he  would  have  called  on  his 'Squire  to 
take  a  staff  and  beat  these  hinds.  Not  so  the  Knight 
Templar  of  our  time;  he  submits  to  the  imjDosition,  and 
then  takes  redress  by  comjDlaining  to  the  newspapers. 

The  Knight  Templar  of  these  piping  times  wears  a 
sword,  but  it  was  never  meant  to  be  used.  A  true  Kniglit' 
Templar  would  call  it  a  toad-sticker.  Instead  of  being 
incased  in  armor,  as  the  Knight  Templar  was  for  an  expe- 
dition or  a  tournament,  or  in  a  long  white  mantle  for  the 
festive  occasions,  they  are  tricked  out  in  stripes  and  bands 
and  finery.  Instead  of  a  helmet  before  whose  visage  even 
the  crows  of  a  cornfield  would  fly  in  terror,  he  has  a  cocked 
hat  and  a  cocked  plume.  He  wears  cavalry  boots  and 
gauntlets,  who  is  never  to  mount  a  horse.  His  boots  arc  a 
sham  of  seeming  bootlegs  of  glazed  cloth,  strapped  down 
over  shoes.  Instead  of  a  tournament,  where  the  horse  and 
armor  of  the  beaten  is  the  spoil  of  the  victor,  who  then  is 
crowned  by  whatever  damsel  he  shall  select  as  Queen  of 
Beauty  and  Love,  he  now  marches  through  the  streets  and 
goes  through  evolutions,  to  the  admiration  of  small  boys. 


96  DEGENERACY   OF  KKIGHT  TEMPLARHOOD. 

And  their  evolutions  are  not  martial,  but  emblemati- 
cal— and  of  what?  Of  base  mechanical  tools  and  figures. 
They  meet  upon  the  level,  and  part  upon  the  sqiiare,  and 
wheel  upon  the  compass.  Their  minstrelsy  and  speech  rae 
of  mechanical  implements,  and  they  make  the  workman's 
apron  their  highest  symbol,  instead  Of  the  lance.  But  the 
real  Knight  Templar  desjused  workmen,  and  most  of  all 
mechanics.  Here  we  come  to  the  root  of  the  matter. 
The  foi'ming  of  an  Order  of  Knights  Templar  upon 
symbols,  and  emblems,  and  types,  and  shadows  of 
mechanical  work  which  the  real  Knight  Templar  despised 
as  belonging  to  the  base  born,  has  come  out  at  this  humility 
of  spirit  which  submits  meekly  to  the  impositions  and  ex- 
tortions of  the  sutlers  of  a  city  which  lives  by  sutlerage, 
and  instead  of  righting  themselves  with  good  swords,  goes 
complaining  to  the  newspapers,  which  the  real  Knight 
Templar  could  not  read. 


XX. 

IS  WOMAN  SUPERFICIAL. 

MAN'S  tender  mercies  to  woman  are  instruments  of 
cruelty.  What  he  calls  chivalrous  protection  tends 
to  environ  her  with  sexual  disabilities.  His  flatteries  are 
all  addressed  to  her  inferiority.  One  of  the  most  effective 
of  these  strategems  is  the  common  ascription  to  woman  of 
quicker  intuitions  or  instincts  than  man,  and  likewise  of 
more  susceptible  emotions;  for  to  this  has  been  added,  as  if  it 
were  a  rational  sequence,  that  she  is  deficient  in  reasoning 
power,  and  that  her  feelings  have  no  perseverance.  Indeed, 
the  mannish  concession  of  quicker  intuitions  has  classed 
her  with  the  lower  animals,  who  are  allowed  instinct  with- 
out reason.  This  is  what  comes  from  the  practice  which 
has  lasted  till  a  recent  time,  of  allowing  man  to  define 
woman,  and  to  fix  her  place  in  the  scale  of  being.  Thus 
do  all  things  prove  that  woman's  first  step  toward  her 
emancipation  is  to  recognize  that  man  is  her  natural 
enemy,  and  that,  in  the  words  of  Jefferson,  she  must 
henceforth  hold  him  as  an  enemy  in  war  and  in  peace  a 
suspected  friend. 

The  mannish  habit  is  to  say  that  woman  is  superficial; 
that  she  only  scratches  the  surface  of  subjects;  that  she  lias 
some  quick  intuitions,  but  no  mind  for  deep  problems,  and 
no  reasoning  powers.  The  saying  is  only  an  example  of 
the  wrong  which  man  has  piled  on  woman  ever  since  she 
was  invented.  Are  quick  surface  indications  a  sign  of  lack 
of  depth?  Is  not  the  deep  ocean  superficially  agitated  by 
a  squall?  And  we  have  to  ask  who  can  draw  the  line 
between  instinct  and  reason?  Would  not  the  procreation 
7  97 


98  IS   WOMAN   SUPEKFICIAL? 

of  mankind  be  a  still  greater  miracle,  if  reason  were  male, 
and  instinct  female,  and  yet  she  the  breeder  of  the  reason- 
ing sex? 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  limitation  of  woman's 
reasoning  faculties  while  ground  down  by  superstition  in 
the  dark  ages,  when  her  mind  is  liberated  by  taking  up  the 
cause  of  her  own  political  enfranchisement,  it  takes  hold 
on  the  bottom  principles  which  underlie  the  springs  of  the 
undercurrents  of  things. 

Venerable  saws  are  in  general  venerable  lies.  How 
often  do  we  see  these  cited  as  maxims  in  the  face  of  uni- 
versal experience  !  So,  in  the  face  of  woman's  perform- 
ance, showing  a  special  propensity  to  go  to  the  bottom  of 
things,  and  a  special  lack  of  that  reverence  for  accepted 
principles  which  keeps  man  from  rushing  in  to  explore  for 
himself,  the  saying  is  kept  up,  that  woman  is  incapable  of 
deep  investigation.  In  the  very  beginning  she  cast  off  con- 
sequences to  acquire  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  while 
man  seems  to  have  been  content  with  simple  existence. 
In  the  cause  of  her  own  enfranchisement  she  sounds  the 
very  keynote  of  human  nature  and  the  deep  processes  of 
inflexible  logic.  The  declaration  that  all  men  are  created 
equal,  she  has  found  to  embrace  woman,  with  the  improve- 
ment that  she  is  created  morally  superior.  She  has  shown 
that  there  is  no  rightful  authority  to  govern  any  man, 
woman,  or  child  without  his  or  her  consent. 

Putting  together  the  Dred  Scott  decision,  which  de- 
clared that  citizenship  means  the  possession  of  the  elective 
franchise,  and  the  Fourteenth  Amendment,  which  declares 
that  all  persons  born  on  the  soil  or  naturalized  are  citizens, 
she  proves  that  women  are  now  electors  under  the  Constitu- 
tion. Suppose  that  this  does  make  infants  voters  also; 
logic  is  inexorable,  it  does  not  stop  for  consequences.  On 
the  question  of  reconstruction  of  the  Confederate  States 


IS  WOMAN   SUPERFICIAL?  99 

by  enfranchising  the  freedmen,  did  not  our  great  states- 
man say  the  bhicks  woukl  know  enough  to  vote  for  their 
friends. 

If  this  was  intelligence  enough  for  them,  does  not  the 
infant  know  enough  lo  vote  as  its  mother  shall  direct? 
Is  not  the  nursing  mother  of  a  future  statesman  the  safest 
guide  to  its  little  hand  in  depositing  its  infantile  ballot? 
In  the  working  of  the  best  government  the  sun  shines  on, 
are  not  multitudes  of  the  electors  directed  as  helplessly  as 
this  in  casting  their  ballots,  and  much  less  wisely?  Thus 
there  is  really  nothing  in  the  consequence  of  infant  elec- 
tors to  overthrow  the  logic  which  in  enfranchising  woman 
enfranchises  her  babe.  She  grapples  the  foundation  prin- 
ciples of  our  national  independence — namely,  first,  that 
no  one  can  be  subject  to  government  without  his  consent, 
and  second,  that  representation  and  taxation  are  insepara- 
ble, or  in  other  words,  that  the  right  to  vote  rests  on  the 
payment  of  taxes.       • 

She  applies  these  to  her  own  rights.  How  can  we  dis- 
pute them — we  whose  fathers  made  the  British  lion  drop 
his  tail  and  howl  with  anguish  by  vehement  utterance  of 
these  self-evident  truths?  Thus  does  woman,  at  the  first 
dive  into  political  affairs,  sound  the  hardpan  under  the 
mud  of  the  bottom.  In  this  she  only  applies  to  her 
rights  the  foundation  political  principles  which  we  have 
built  a  nation  upon.  But  she  has  gone  beyond  this  to  up- 
root the  foundation  of  religion,  to  show  that  this  has  been 
perverted  into  a  power  for  her  enslavement. 

A  series  of  resolutions  adopted  by  a  female  suffrage 
convention  at  Rochester,  N.  Y.,  declared  that  man  had 
from  the  beginning  usurped  the  function  of  receiving, 
transmitting,  translating,  and  expounding  the  Scriptures, 
and  had  used  this  office  to  make  the  Bible  an  instrument 
to  subject  woman  to  him  by  a  fabulous  narrative  of  her 


100  IS  WOMAN   SUPERFICIAL? 

origin  and  fall,  and  by  foisting  upon  it  injunctions  of 
submissive  servitude.  In  this  the  acute  female  mind  can 
see  the  design  of  the  common  manly  saying  that  religion 
is  a  necessity  to  woman,  although  man  can  get  along  with- 
out it  till  the  time  comes  to  pack  his  carpet  bag  for 
the  judgment  seat. 

By  this  usurped  priesthood  did  man  make  woman's  cre- 
ation out  of  a  fragment  of  himself,  thereby  divesting  her 
of  personal  identity.  By  this  did  he  make  both  one,  and 
that  one  the  male.  By  this  did  he  put  in  all  those  decla- 
rations that  woman  shall  cleave  unto  man,  and  those  injunc- 
tions upon  her  to  obey  him.  For  so  many  thousand  years 
has  man  played  this  fraud  uj)on  woman;  but  now  she  has 
discovered  it.  She  has  found  that  the  very  beginning  of 
her  suffrage  cause  demands  a  female  Bible,  or  at  least  an 
unsexed  Bible.  As  she  has  demanded  the  abolition  of  sex 
in  politics,  so  she  must  demand  its  abolition  in  the  Scrip- 
tures. • 

Likewise  did  woman  strike  to  the  bottom  principle  of 
the  genesis,  development,  and  perpetuity  of  the  human 
race,  when  the  suffragists  in  their  last  national  convention 
resolved  that  whereas  the  mental  state  of  the  moth*  has  a 
governing  influence  on  the  mind  of  her  child,  therefore  the 
practice  of  politics  by  the  mother  is  essential  to  the  polit- 
ical capacity  of  the  child. 

Likewise  one  of  the  resolutions  of  the  recent  National 
Woman  Suffrage  Convention  at  Indianapolis  has  a  decla- 
ration which  plants  the  principle  of  woman  suffrage  in  the 
very  process  of  human  generation,  and  proves  it  indispen- 
sable to  man's  elevation,  as  well  as  to  woman.     It  declares: 

"  That  since  the  child  is  influenced  by  the  condition  of 
the  mother  and  its  first  training  comes  from  her,  therefore 
woman's  absolute  freedom  from  all  restraint  upon  her  pow- 
ers, as  well  as  her  endowment  with  all  the  rights  of  citizen- 


IS  WOMAN  SUPERFICIAL?  101 

ship,  is  not  only  imperatively  necessary  for  the  perpetua- 
tion of  onr  free  institutions,  but  for  the  securing  of  a 
higher  type  of  humanity." 

In  this,  as  in  all  her  suffrage  reasoning,  she  plants  her 
claim  upon  principles  and  facts  which  no  man  can  deny. 
The  influence  of  the  mind  of  the  mother  upon  her  olT- 
spring  during  the  period  of  gestation  is  a  fact  recognized 
•  in  all  ages.     A  common  maxim  recognizes  that  if  the  son 
;,-has  genius  or  strong  character,  he  gets  it  from  the  mother. 
I  Also  the  common  belief  is  that  any  mental  disturbance  of 
the  mother,  any  special  affliction  or   apprehension,  any 
unsatisfied  desires,  are  apt  to  give  an  idiosyncrasy  or  a  spe- 
cial mark  to  the  offspring. 

The  Spartan  mothers  [this  is  new]  while  in  this  iutor- 
esting  condition  were  plied  with  poetical  narrations  of 
heroic  deeds,  chanted  in  the  manner  of  the  time,  in  order 
that  they  might  bring  forth  heroes.  It  is  related  that  this 
treatment  bred  such  a  heroic  strain  of  men  that  a  Spartan 
youth, who  had  hidden  within  his  toga  a  fox,  Avhich  in 
point  of  fact  he  had  come  by  surrejDtitiously,  let  it  tear  his 
bowels  open,  while  his  teacher  confronted  him,  rather  than 
confess  the  theft.  To  such  a  pitch  of  heroism  can  sons  bo 
bred  by  operating  on  the  fancies  of  the  mothers.  On  tlic 
other  hand,  must  not  the  sons  degenerate  if  the  motlicis 
are  politically  enslaved?  Can  slave  mothers  bring  forlli 
sons  that  can  perpetuate  their  freedom?  Not  if  all  these 
universal  maxims  and  beliefs  are  true. 

Who  can  doubt  that  political  activity  in  the  mother  in 
these  interesting  seasons  will  bring  forth  statesmen?  Tail- 
less all  these  maxims  are  false,  it  must  be  true  that  if  thi; 
mother  is  a  politician,  and  is  active  at  the  primaries,  the 
city,  county,  district,  and  State  conventions,  and  in  the 
election  canvass,  and  if  she  votes  early  and  often,  this 
political  agitation  will  give  a  political  bent  to  her  offs2)ring 


102  IS   WOMAN   SUPEKFICIAL? 

in  the  twig,  which  will  be  a  governing  inclination  in  the 
tree?  Does  not  this  point  the  way  to  make  all  our  women 
breeders  of  statesmen,  all  our  citizens  Governors,  Senators, 
and  Presidents?  And  is  not  this  way  i^lainly  through 
woman  suffrage?  Could  man  go  deeper  into  the  things  of 
reason  than  is  here  done  by  woman,  who  in  the  cause  of 
political  equality  attacks  the  corner-stone  of  religious  faith? 

These  are  some  of  the  profound  intellectual  achieve- 
ments of  woman  in  her  own  cause.  Is  it  not  time  to  ex- 
tinguish the  old  saying  that  woman  is  superficial?  The 
same  admirable  woman-suffrage  journal,  the  National  Cit- 
izen, that  brings  us  this  highest  attainment  yet  made  by 
woman  in  fundamental  principles,  contains  also  remarkable 
testimony  by  a  man  to  woman's  unknowable  depth.  It  is 
contained  in  a  letter  by  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton  to 
the  convention,  containing  the  following  : 

"Wise  men  assure  us  that  woman  is  and  must  ever  be  an 
enigma  to  man,  and  therein  lies  her  chief  attraction  ! 
How  then  can  they  legislate  for  a  being  the  law  of 
whose  existence  they  can  not  understand  ?  A  distinguished 
General  said  to  me  a  few  months  since,  in  speaking  of  his 
wife  :  '  The  most  complex  problem  I  ever  tried  to  solve 
is  a  woman.  I  have  lived  with  my  wife  thirty  years,  and 
yet  every  day  she  startles  me  with  some  new  declaration 
or  proposed  line  of  conduct.  I  supposed  in  starting  life 
that  if  I  studied  the  character  of  one  woman  I  should  un- 
derstand the  whole  sex  ;  but  in  my  old  age  I  frankly  con- 
fess that  what  I  have  learned  of  one  makes  that  one  more 
incomprehensible,  and  throws  no  light  on  the  rest.  Every 
woman  I  meet  is  like  a  new  volume  of  some  abstruse  science 
I  have  never  studied  before.  Hence  I  am  in  favor  of 
woman-suffrage,  as  I  do  not  want  the  responsibility  of  gov- 
erning beings  always  outside  the  line  within  which  a  man 
expects  to  find  them,  using  tactics  not  laid  down  in  books, 
but  which  outgeneral  us  every  time."' 


IS  W0MA5r   SUPERFICIAL?  103 

The  argument  is  uiiiinswenible.  IIow  can  man  ''  repre- 
sent" in  State  aflairs  a  being  he  can  not  comprehend  ? 
How  govern  intelligently  a  being  who  is  ever  a  mystery  to 
him?  Who  can  govern  or  represent  an  enigma?  If  the 
wisest  men  find  woman  unknowable,  shall  tlie  average 
voting  class  dare  to  represent  her?  Even  if  man  by  search- 
ing and  long  experience  could  find  out  .the  mystery  of  one 
woman,  still  she  is  no  criterion  for  any  other  woman.  Here 
is  a  General,  a  man  appointed  to  command  men,  and  who 
has  probably  earned  his  rank  by  the  most  lavish  and  blun- 
dering consumption  of  common  soldiers,  but  who  confesses 
that  although  he  has  lived  with  his  wife  thirty  years,  he 
has  not  yet  begun  to  find  her  out;  that  every  day  she  sur- 
prises him  with  some  new  phase.  Therefore  this  General, 
like  a  wise  man,  does  not  want  the  responsibility  of  the 
political  government  of  women. 

Yet  this  will  make  it  necessary  to  set  off  women  as  a  sep- 
arate state;  for,  to  be  governed  by  an  enigma,  a  "  most 
complex  problem/'  a  being  who  startles  every  day  with  a 
new  phase  of  character,  or  line  of  conduct,  may  be  to  man 
as  bad  as  to  govern  an  enigma.  But  what  a  testimony  is  this 
to  woman's  inscrutable  depth!  What  woman  ever  said  the 
like  of  any  man?  Did  any  woman  ever  say  of  any  man, 
as  was  said  of  a  woman: 

"  Age  can  not  wither  nor  custom  stale 
Her  infinite  variety?  " 

Did  woman  ever  find  man  a  complex  problem,  an  enig- 
ma, an  incomprehensible  mystery?  No  woman  has  lived 
with  a  man  a  month  without  taking  his  full  measure,  intel- 
lectual and  moral — without  finding  out  all  his  weak  spots, 
and  sounding  the  shallowness  of  his  deep  ones;  without 
finding  how  easily  he  is  lead  by  the  nose  through  his  mere 
animal  appetites,  and  that  his  pretenses  of  learning  were 
all  set  up  on  a  few  stock  pieces,  and  his  v.dt  as  old  and  fin- 
ished as  the  jest  book? 


104  IS  WOMAN   St;Pi:RFICIAL? 

In  view  of  such  a  tremendous  difference,  what  assur- 
ance is  it  in  man  to  pretend  that  he  is  woman's  political 
representative?  How  unnatural  that  woman  should  sub- 
mit to  it!  How  impracticable  that  the  same  govermnent 
can  be  truly  representative  to  beings  so  diverse  by  nature! 
These  intellectual  achievements  in  the  profoundest  prob- 
lems and  reaches .  of  creation,  theology,  physiology  and 
political  sociology,  should  forever  set  at  rest  the  talk  that 
woman  is  superficial. 


XXI. 

THE  SCANDAL  MONGERS. 

A  TERRIBLE  calamity  falls  upon  a  family, — the  ruin 
of  a  daughter;  the  crushing  of  a  girl's  whole  life;  the 
bringing  of  another  being  into  the  world  to  carry  through 
life  a  stigma  upon  its  birth;  the  affliction  and  mortification 
of  the  whole  family — a  calamity  which  might  soften  the 
most  cruel  hearts  to  pity,  and  might  be  expected  to  touch 
the  sympathies  of  all  the  good  neighbors.  All  possible 
means  are  taken  to  hide  the  disgrace  from  the  world. 
What  could  be  gained  by  spreading  the  shame?  Months 
pass  by;  the  unobserved  removal  of  the  ruined  girl  to  a 
distant  home,  and  the  merciful  disposal  of  the  child,  seem 
to  have  taken  away  the  danger  of  exposure;  the  lapse  of 
time  without  this  exposure  has  in  some  degree  mitigated 
the  mortification. 

A  discharged  servant-girl  takes  revenge  by  telling  the 
tale.  Months  after  the  event  a  newspaper  gets  a  vague 
hold  of  it,  serves  it  up  as  fresh,  and  spreads  it  before  the 
public  with  fanciful  embellishments  calculated  to  feed  pru- 
riency, and  making  a  pitiful  affectation  of  decency  by 
withholding  names,  while  designating  the  neighborhood 
and  otherwise  pointing  curiosity.  A  rival  newspaper,  to 
make  up  for  being  a  day  behind,  gives  initials  of  the 
names,  and  adds  other  fanciful  em'bellishments.  The 
shame  of  a  ruined  young  girl,  and  the  distress  of  her  fam 
ily,  are  made  a  prurient  sensation  to  sell  a  newspaper. 
What  a  trade  for  able-bodied  men  to  follow  for  a  living 
And  this  in  a  country  where  so  much  land  lies  untilled, 
and  where  common  labor  fetches  $1.50  a  day! 

105 


106  THE  SCANDAL  MONGERS. 

Women,  mothers,  pious  women,  women  that  call  them- 
selves society,  women  that  are  busy-bodies  in  the  church; 
that  think  themselves  pious;  that  would  be  insulted  at  an 
intimation  that  they  are  not  pure-minded,  or  that  they  are 
lacking  in  sympathy  for  their  kind,  read  the  papers  that 
make  merchandise  of  the  terrible  afflictions  of  their  neigh- 
bors; gloat  over  these  gloating  narrations;  have  a  sensation 
of  exhilaration  at  this  crushing  calamity  to  their  own  kind; 
patronize  these  panders  to  their  own  cruel  and  corrupt 
natures;  make  themselves  accessory  to  this  invasion  of  the 
sacred  privacy  of  the  family  to  make  its  calamity  a  profit 
of  the  trade  of  scandal-mongering,  and  are  not  a  whit  bet- 
ter than  the  pandering  trader  who  supplies  the  wares  which 
their  natures  demand, 


XXII. 
THE   FINAL  CHILL, 

AT  length  the  final  chill  sets  in.  There  had  been 
premonitions  years  before  in  dark  spots  on  the  sun> 
showing  that  it  was  burning  out;  but  its  revolution 
turned  these  away,  and  fitfully  it  seemed  to  burn  with  its 
old  energy,  and  the  scientific  persons  prognosticated  noth- 
ing from  these  most  significant  signs.  But  at  length  the 
appearance  of  several  groups  of  spots,  which  astronomers 
said  were  from  80,000  to  100,000  miles  across,  and  a 
rapid  succession  of  storms  on  the  ocean,  and  of  earth- 
quakes, whirlwinds,  cyclones,  and  floods  on  land,  together 
with  comets  with  very  long  tails,  the  aurora  borealis 
spreading  over  the  whole  firmament.  Mother  Shipton, 
Prof.  Wiggins  and  many  other  things,  told  of  a  mighty 
disturbance  in  nature's  order. 

The  sun  had  always  given  evidence  that  its  heat  and 
light-giving  power,  was  made  by  combustion,  and  that, 
too,  the  combustion,  of  its  own  matter.  Science  could 
have  foretold  that  it  would  burn  out  in  time.  But  science 
seems  to  tell  only  of  the  past.  The  face  and  bowels  of 
the  earth,  from  the  equator  to  the  poles,  proved  that  ex- 
treme changes  of  climate  had  taken  place  in  past  ages, 
but  science  prognosticated  from  these  nothing  as  to  the 
future.  And  if  it  had,  no  good  would  have  come  of  it. 
Although  we  may  have  gone  through  life  without  seeing 
any  purpose  in  our  creation,  yet  it  is  not  pleasant  to  con- 
template the  final  freezing  or  burning  of  posterity. 

To  human  experience  the  processes  of  nature  were  so 
slow  that  the  present  order  appeared  to  be  fixed  everlast- 

107 


lOS  THE   FINAL  CHILL. 

ingly.  Even  when  great  gaps  opened  in  the  face  of  the 
sun,  showing  that  it  was  consuming  its  substance,  we  as- 
sumed that  it  must  be  a  process  of  millions  of  years,  and, 
therefore,  of  no  concern  to  us;  whereas  reason  should 
have  told  that  when  combustion  had  gone  so  far  as  to  ex- 
haust the  fuel  in  part,  the  end  of  all  the  fuel  was  near. 
All  do  know  how  quickly  the  remnant  of  coal  in  the  bin 
disappears  when  the  floor  shows  in  spots.  It  is  well  that 
inevitable  calamities  are  not  revealed  to  us  until  they 
come,  for  if  they  were  the  expectation  would  be  a  con- 
stant concern. 

A  popular  belief  that  the  end  of  our  earth  would  come 
by  fire  helped  to  make  mankind  careless  of  the  sun's  con- 
sumption of  fuel  and  unmindful  of  the  obvious  fact  that 
all  the  heat  which  it  gave  to  earth  was  at  the  cost  of  its 
own  body.  The  spring  at  last  failed  to  bring  the  usual 
awakening  of  nature  from  the  sleep  of  winter.  It  was  a 
season  of  storms,  floods,  tornadoes,  and  of  cold,  with  but 
fitful  gleams  of  the  sun,  and  these  revealing  an  alarming 
increase  of  the  darkened  spots. 

The  season  of  planting  passed  by,  and  such  planting  as 
was  forced  in  spite  of  the  cold  came  to  naught.  The  fruit 
blossoms,  which  had  been  seduced  out  by  a  fitful  week  of 
heat,  were  cut  off,  and  winter  seemed  to  have  set  in  again. 
Clothing  men  found  their  great  stocks  for  summer  wear  as 
dead  as  nature.  The  cereals  and  fruits  of  the  temperate  zone 
disappeared  and  only  the  grasses  and  vegetables  of  the  Arc- 
tic circle  remained  for  a  time.  Gradually  the  animals  of  the 
temperate  zone  ceased  to  exist.  Indeed,  there  was  neither 
food  nor  use  for  the  beasts  of  burden,  and  the  former 
food  animals  could  no  longer  find  sustenance. 

The  sun  appeared  still  to  rise  and  set  as  before;  but  it 
had  lost  the  power  to  dispel  the  clouds,  and  when  its  mottled 
face  did  appear,  it  gave  only  a  pale  twilight.     At  the  first 


THE  FINAL  CHILL.  109 

period  there  was  a  greatly  increased  consumption  of  fuel, 
and  the  cost  of  this  rose  enormously  so  that  only  the  rich 
could  afford  it;  but  this  could  not  last.  The  earth's  store 
of  coal  could  not  stand  the  demands  of  a  universal  polar 
climate,  and  with  the  coming  of  the  polar  cold  the  industries 
of  the  temperate  climate  died  out,  and  the  poverty  and 
primitive  condition  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  frozen  zone 
supervened. 

The  inhabitants  sought  in  underground  habitations  and 
in  ice  caverns  shelter  from  the  chill  which  they  had  not 
fuel  to  combat.  The  whole  of  life  became  a  struggle  for 
life  against  the  cold.  In  the  twilight  days,  they  hunted 
for  the  animal  food  which  had  become  their  sole  suste- 
nance, and  escaped  as  quickly  as  they  could  to  their  huts, 
where  their  condition  was  scarcely  more  social  and  intel- 
lectual than  the  hybernating  animals.  The  elegances  and 
sociabilities  of  life  disappeared.  Literature,  and  even  the 
written  language,  were  lost.  Love,  marriage,  and  parental 
feeling,  became  as  low  as  among  the  beasts.  In  the  dull 
struggle  of  existence,  gross,  beastly  selfishness  became  su- 
preme. 

With  the  cessation  of  general  intercourse  nationality 
ceased,  and  political  relations  expired,  and  each  little  com- 
munity was  isolated  in  its  own  village  of  huts,  and  had  no 
law.  The  practice  of  self-government  was  carried  to  the 
perfection  of  the  democratic  ideal. 

The  coming  dissolution  of  nature  had  extinguished  the 
food  products.  While  this  was  uncertain,  there  was  much 
speculation  in  the  cereals  and  in  other  food  articles  in  the 
great  marts  of  produce,  and  the  nominal  sales  footed  up 
enough  to  carry  the  world  tlirough  Joseph's  Egyptian 
famine.  Great  fortunes  seemed  to  be  made  by  the 
*'longs";  but  nothing  can  be  got  from  a  dead  cat  but  her 
skin,  and  not  even  this  could  be  realized  from  the  "  shorts.'* 


110  THE  FIKAL  CHILL. 

They  were  ruined,  but  the  longs  were  not  made  rich,  and 
soon  there  was  no  pretext  of  a  base  for  these  phantom  op- 
erations. Money  ceased  to  have  any  purchasing  power, 
and  all  were  sunk  into  the  general  struggle  for  food  enough 
to  hold  life  together  against  the  rigors  of  the  Arctic  cold. 

Yet  the  likening  of  this  to  the  Arctic  clime  is  not  ac- 
curate, for  in  that  clime  the  sun  shines  with  great  power 
during  a  brief  summer,  and  then  disappears  for  a  long 
winter.  The  sun  was  dying  to  all  climes,  alike  at  the 
equator  and  the  poles.  The  summer  day  was  only  a 
ghostly  twilight,  with  but  little  warmth;  the  winter  a 
deeper  twilight  and  an  unmitigated  cold.  As  that  which 
had  been  the  temperate  and  torrid  zones  became  a  region 
of  perpetual  ice,  and  its  mountain  gaps  filled  up  with 
glaciers,  the  animal  life  of  the  Arctics  migrated  south- 
ward, and  polar  bears,  seals,  walruses,  sea  lions,  reindeer, 
whales,  feathered  fowl,  and  all  the  abounding  animal  king- 
dom of  the  Arctics  spread  over  land  and  sea,  and  furnished 
food  to  the  diminished  inhabitants.  The  ice-bound  sea 
reclaimed  much  of  the  land. 

A  change  took  place  in  the  physical  parts  of  the  inhab- 
itants. They  dwindled  in  size  ;  their  skins  grew  dark,  their 
hair  black  and  lank  ;  they  became  stupid  in  mind  and  in- 
dolent in  habit,  having  no  aptitude  save  in  catching  the 
animals  which  supplied  their  greasy  food.  They  lived  on 
animal  fat,  and  this  furnished  the  little  light  and  heat  in 
their  huts.  But  their  eyes  adapted  themselves  to  the  twi- 
light, so  that  their  vision  remained  ;  otherwise  they  could 
hardly  have  caught  their  food  animals.  The  women — 
clothed  in  a  sort  of  liosenhemd  of  sealskin  trousers,  boots 
and  jacket  in  one,  flat- faced,  greasy,  mere  drudges,  having 
nothing  to  gossip  about,  consequently  their  minds  dead — 
were  so  ugly  that  even  a  group  of  street-corner  loafers 
would  not  be  tempted  to  look  at  them. 


THE  FINAL  CHILL.  Ill 

But  all  these  effects  of  the  final  chill  did  not  come 
smoothly.  All  nature  seemed  in  the  agony  of  dissolution. 
The  earth  behaved  in  a  most  eccentric  manner,  as  if  wab- 
bling on  its  axis,  like  a  spent  top.  Dreadful  storms  swept 
over  it,  making  life  impossible  except  under  ground,  and 
in  caverns  digged  in  the  masses  of  ice.  Comets  darted 
into  the  sun,  spreading  a  momentary  flash  over  its  dark- 
ened face,  the  wind  of  their  tails  making  terrible  cyclones. 
The  planets  of  the  solar  system  were  straying  from  their 
orbits  as  the  sun's  power  dwindled.  The  throes  of  expir- 
ing nature  made  existence  a  horror  to  the  inhabitants. 
The  sun's  center  had  all  turned  dark,  and  only  a  Jagged 
border  of  flickering  fire  recorded  its  rapid  extinction. 

The  final  dissolution  could  not  be  far  off,  and  could  not 
be  checked  when  the  sun,  the  source  of  all  power  and  the 
regulator  of  the  universe,  was  expiring.  At  last  it  went 
out,  like  a  flickering  tallow  candle  ;  the  planets  fell  into 
each  other  and  exploded  into  chaos.  All  was  darkness, 
and  again  the  earth  was  without  form  and  void.  Nothing 
was  left  of  the  globe  which  only  a  little  while  ago  was  the 
seat  of  so  much  human  power ;  of  mechanical  appliances 
which  seemed  to  defy  nature  ;  of  so  much  wealth,  learning, 
and  art ;  of  so  grand  and  so  small  passions  ;  of  human 
pride  which  towered  far  above  the  Tower  of  Babel ;  of 
music  festivals,  opera  festivals,  and  dramatic  festivals  ;  of 
beer  and  daily  newspapers  ;  of  the  American  spread  eagle, 
the  privilege  of  voting  early  and  often,  and  the  best  gov- 
ernment the  sun  ever  shone  on. 

Of  all  this  no  trace  was  left,  and  now  chaotic  matter 
awaited  the  time  when  some  accident,  perhaps  of  that  uni- 
versal scientific  solvent,  electricity,  should  again  tumble 
it  together  ;  when  the  atomic  friction  of  its  embrace  should 
fill  all  space  with  gaseous  matter  at  white  heat ;  when  its 
rushing  together  should  set  all  to  wMrling,  and  to  reeling 


112  THE   FINAL   CHILL. 

off  fiery  worlds  to  take  np  their  orbits  around  the  central 
fire,  to  repeat  the  same  cycles,  and  to  cool  down  to  the 
final  chill,  and  expire  as  before.  But  all  this  subsequent 
proceeding  had  ceased  to  interest  the  inhabitants  of  the 
world  of  the  nineteenth  century. 


XXIII. 

EARLY  HISTORY  OF  THE  WOMEN  MOVE- 
MENT. 

TO  those  who  behold  the  woman's  rights  movement  in 
its  present  majesty  and  power,  the  story  of  its  small 
beginning  seems  a  fairy  tale.  For  this  squally  sea  was 
once  a  little  babbling  brooklet.  This  great  tree,  in  whose 
branches  now  roost  cackling  fowls,  was  once  a  mustard 
seed.  Yet  in  so  short  a  period  has  it  risen  to  this  might 
that  women  who  had  reached  the  age  of  female  maturity 
at  its  birth  still  possess  personal  charms,  such  as  Susan  B. 
Anthony  and  Mrs,  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton.  Pleasing 
reminiscences  of  its  beginning,  which  was  at  Seneca  Falls, 
N.  Y.,  are  narrated  in  the  Woman's  Journal,  of  August 
14,  by  Mary  S.  Bull,  who  describes  herself  as  then  a  young 
heifer,  but  with  that  acute  observation  of  childhood  which 
the  grown-up  always  ignore,  and  which  each  one  thinks 
Avas  in  her  own  case  an  abnormal  brightness. 

Sages  have  written  that  the  development  of  culture  in 
human  society  can  not  begin  until  individuals  or  classes 
have  got  beyond  the  necessity  of  incessant  labor  for  mere 
subsistence.  In  this  is  the  paradox  that  although  all  agree 
that  labor  is  noble,  yet  labor  is  not  ennobling.  A  class 
with  means  to  allow  leisure  is  pre-requisite  to  culture,  and 
so  it  comes  that  the  natural  order  is  that  they  who  live  by 
the  labor  of  the  mass  shall  think  for  them.  Also  a  pious 
hymnist  told  in  flowing  rhymes  the  facility  for  new  under- 
takings which  is  providentially  given  to  idle  hands.  This 
natural  element  of  progress  was  the  means  of  inventing  the 
8  113 


114       EAELY  HISTORY  OF  THE  WOMAN  MOVEMENT. 

movement  of  woman's  rights.     It  was  done  at  a  tea-drink- 
ing.    Mary  S.  Bull  thus  tells: 

"Four  ladies,  Lucretia  Mott,  Martha  "Wright,  Mary- 
Anne  McOlintoc  and  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton,  sitting 
around  the  tea-table  of  Kichard  Hunt,  a  prominent  Quaker 
living  near  Waterloo,  on  Saturday  evening,  July  15,  1848, 
resolved  to  call  a  convention  to  consider  the  'Rights  of 
Woman,*  and  before  twilight  had  deepened  into  night  the 
call  was  written  and  sent  to  the  Seneca  County  Courier.''' 

A  fateful  tea  party!  In  that  idle  hour  was  set  on  foot  a 
movement  which  is  turning  up  the  bottom  of  society.  But 
it  came  near  being  strangled  at  birth.  The  convention 
had  been  called,  and  next  day  the  callers  met  to  find  out 
what  it  was  about.  Having  called  a  meeting  to  declare 
woman's  rights,  it  was  necessary  to  state  what  were  her 
wrongs,  so  as  to  prepare  resolutions  and  speeches.  No  one 
could  think  of  any.  They  consulted  the  reports  of  peace 
and  anti-slavery  societies  and  other  radical  literature,  but 
found  no  relief.  There  was  danger  that  the  woman's 
rights  meeting  would  fall  Ihrough  for  want  of  a  wrong. 
At  length,  by  a  lucky  thought,  they  struck  upon  that 
great  reservoir  of  American  rhetoric,  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.  They  resolved  to  parody  this  by  substitut- 
ing "all  men"  for  King  George.  Thus  did  they  have  to 
fall  back  upon  a  man's  production  to  get  a  start.  In  this 
part  of  the  history  Mary  S.  Bull  cites  from  Mrs.  Stanton's 
recent  narrative.  They  counted  up,  and  found  that  the 
fathers  declared  eighteen  wrongs;  they  resolved  to  find  the 
same  number,  and  no  more. 

They  looked  into  statute  books,  but  these  were  sealed 
books  to  them.  They  looked  into  church  usages,  customs 
of  society,  and  so  on.  The  want  of  a  wrong  became  a  dis- 
tress. And  then  came  another  humiliation:  they  had  to 
ask  men  to  assist  them  to  make  up  a  list  of  wrongs  of 


EARLY   HISTORY  OF  THE   WOMAN   MOVEMENT  115 

women.  One  of  tliese  remarked:  ''Your  grievanees 
must  be  grievons  indeed  when  you  luive  to  go  to  books 
to  find  them  out." 

The  day  so  big  with  the  fate  of  the  social  framework 
came.  But  the  attempt  of  Walter  Shandy,  Esq..  to  ])eget 
a  sou  upon  a  perfect  theory  did  not  meet  more  misluips  at 
the  very  outset  than  the  Woman's  rights  movement.  The 
multitude  came  to  the  Wesleyan  chapel  and  found  the 
doors  locked.  The  female  apostles  came  upon  the  ground 
and  surveyed  the  premises.  Tlie  doors  were  bolted  on  the 
inside,  and  by  climbing  through  a  window  the  bolts  could 
be  drawn. 

Here  was  a  crisis.  No  female  would  scale  the  breach. 
It  was  an  occasion  for  a  she  Bonaparte,  and  an  act  of  such 
daring  as  when  he  seized  a  flag  and  led  his  hesitating 
troops  upon  the  bridge  of  Lodi  against  the  concentrated 
Austrian  fire.  But  no  female  hero  came  to  the  rescue. 
No  reason  is  given  for  this  reluctance  ;  it  is  left  to  conject- 
ure. At  length  this  movement  of  woman  against  man 
was  again  compelled  to  fall  back  for  help  upon  the  sex 
against  which  they  were  proclaiming  war.  They  suborned 
a  boy  — an  innocent  boy,  who  knew  not  that  he  was  be- 
traying the  supremacy  of  the  male  sex  —  and  boosted  him 
into  the  window.  He  unbolted  the  doors,  and  then  all  en- 
tered. And  now  they  fancied  they  would  find  smooth 
sailing.  But  this  is  not  the  order  of  the  genesis  of  great 
social  reforms  ;  always  do  they  encounter  discouragements 
in  the  beginning,  and  always  suffer  from  the  weakness  of 
their  own  teachers. 

They  attempted  to  organize  the  meeting  l)y  appointing 
a  Chairwoman,  whereat  some  of  the  women  flatly  declared 
they  would  not  work  under  a  female  presiding  officer.  So 
a  compromise  was  made  by  appointing  a  man,  and  thus 
there  was  another  surrender  to  man.     In  time  they  got 


116       EARLY  HISTORY  OF  THE  WOMAN  MOVEMENT. 

going,  and  speech  was  let  loose.  Lucretia  Mott  stated  the 
object ;  Elizabeth  and  Mary  McClintoc  and  Mrs.  Stanton 
read  speeches ;  the  declaration  of  wrongs  and  rights  was 
read  and  reread  and  debated,  and  all  the  resolves  were 
adopted  unanimously  save  that  on  suffrage.  They  were 
not  yet  up  to  that.  The  movement  is  not  disparaged  by 
its  feeble  beginning.  That  these  women  did  not  know 
their  wrongs  was  the  very  reason  why  their  eyes  should  be 
opened.  The  born  bondsman  knows  not  that  slavery  is  an 
evil.  He  is  proud  of  his  owner's  livery  and  name.  Bond- 
age so  crushes  the  soul  that  the  negro  slave  is  a  traditional 
jolly  character.  As  represented  in  minstrelsy  he  is  a  crea- 
ture of  careless  mirth,  always  ready  to  dance  in  the  exu- 
berance of  his  own  nature,  and  thrown  into  extravagant 
physical  manifestations  by  the  notes  of  the  banjo. 

Thus  is  contentment  itself  a  sign  of  a  down-trodden 
state.  That  these  women  could  find  no  wrongs  to  com- 
plain of  proves  the  infinity  of  their  wrongs.  But  agitation 
soon  opened  their  eyes.  They  bit  an  apple  of  the  tree  of 
knowledge,  and  thenceforth  had  an  abundant  stock  of 
wrongs  without  asking  man  to  help  find  them.  So  did 
this  realization  increase,  that  an  eloquent  orator  of  wom- 
an's wrongs,  who  has  made  a  very  good  thing  by  promul- 
gating them,  while  her  husband  enjoys  the  precarious  sal- 
ary of  a  country  minister,  has  told  on  the  platform  that  so 
much  had  she  felt  woman's  oppressions  that  when  she  be- 
came a  mother,  and  the  attending  priestesses  told  her  it 
was  a  girl,  she  turned  her  face  to  the  wall,  and  wept  that 
she  had  not  added  another  to  the  number  of  the  oppres- 
sors. 


xxiy. 

HOW  AND  WHEN  TO  DIE. 

THE  invention  of  death  made  life  possible.  If  all  that 
had  been  born  Avere  now  living,  they  would  stand  on 
each  other's  heads,  five  or  six  deep  all  over  the  earth's 
crust.  Thus,  death  is  a  blessing  to  the  whole,  but  it  is  a 
blessing  which  each  individual  desires  to  put  off  as  long  as 
possible.  People  have  ideas  of  the  proper  time  and 'man- 
ner of  dying.  There  are  medical  theorists  who  affirm 
that  mankind,  started  with  fair  constitutions,  and  living 
correct  physiological  lives,  would  live  a  hundred  years. 
Fortunately  they  do  not  get  this  fair  start,  nor  live  physi- 
ologically; for  if  they  did,  the  battle  of  life  to  the  rising 
generation  would  be  still  harder.  The  act  of  bringing 
children  into  the  world,  without  their  consent,  is  an  implied 
contract  to  get  out  of  their  way  in  due  time,  and  give 
them  a  chance.  Thus,  unusual  longevity  is  a  breach  of 
faith  with  posterity. 

The  fancy  pictures  the  beauty  of  dying  from  old  age; 
of  the  gradual  and  imperceptible  and  simultaneous  wearing 
out  of  the  bodily  part,  like  the  Deacon's  one  horse  shay, 
whose  parts  were  so  accurat'ely  balanced  that  one  could 
wear  no  faster  than  another,  and  which  at  the  end  collajosed 
all  together.  It  pictures  a  departure  free  from  bodily  dis- 
ease, as  when  a  lamp  goes  out  for  want  of  oil.  And  as  all 
this  had  been  apparent,  it  has  a  picture  of  children  aiid 
children's  children  standing  round  the  deathbed,  receiving 
counsels  and  farewells,  like  the  twelve  round  Jacob's  couch. 
But  death  by  old  age  does  not  come  in  that  way.  AVe  are 
fearfully  and  wonderfully  made.     Sustenance  and  the  sev- 

117 


118  HOW  AND  WHEN  TO   DIE. 

eral  brandies  of  digestion  occupy  the  chief  part  of  our 
being.  Our  bodily  organs  do  not  run  down  imperceptibly 
like  a  clocks  and  stop  without  a  jar. 

Even  if  our  construction  had  been  so  nearly  balanced 
in  all  its  parts  as  the  Deacon's  one  horse  shay,  our  lives 
are  such  that  the  wear  is  unequal.  One  organ  or  another 
fails  to  perform  its  function.  This  is  disease,  and  this 
lieljjs  to  derange  other  organs.  To  use  words  with  which 
doctors  astonish  their  patients,  there  is  a  non-elimination 
of  the  morbilic  matter  which  is  generated  in  the  process 
of  retrograde  metamorphosis.  The  man  becomes  a  burden 
to  himself  and  his  friends.  With  the  ceasing  of  his  organs 
to  do  their  functions  his  mind  becomes  disordered,  and  he 
is  a  pitiful  wreck,  bodily  and  mentally.  He  may  have 
strange  desires  which  belie  his  true  character,  or  strange 
notions  of  his  children  and  other  relations,  which  leave 
impressions  perhaps  more  lasting  than  the  lessons  of  his 
healthy  life.  At  heart  his  relations  think  his  death  would 
be  a  relief  to  all,  but  they  are  forced  to  think  that  the 
thought  is  unnatural. 

Thus  death  from  old  age  is  a  fearful  thing  to  contem- 
plate. Death  from  acute  disease,  before  any  serious  decay 
of  the  bodily  organs,  is  better.  Nor  is  the  scene  of  a 
gathering  of  relations  around  the  dying  bed  to  be  desired. 
It  harrows  the  dying  and  the  living  without  benefit.  Desire 
for  life  and  horror  of  death  are  planted  in  all  natures. 
That  the  dying  should  go  off  unconsciously,  and  the  living 
be  spared  the  dying  scene,  would  be  wiser.  There  are 
doctors  who  let  patients  die  a  slow  death,  tormented  by 
pain,  when  they  might  benumb  the  sense  of  pain.  It  is  a 
crime,  but  they  do  this  cruelty  in  order  that  the  person 
may  be  conscious  that  he  is  dying.  Sudden  and  unlooked- 
for  death,  before  any  material  decay  of  the  faculties,  would 
be  best,  if  it  were  not  for  the  common  belief  in  the  need 


HOW   AND   WHEN   TO   DIE  119 

of  preparation  for  another  life  and  the  common  practice 
of  putting  it  off  to  the  hist. 

Man  is  generous  in  allowing  a  need  of  religion  for  the 
future  life,  but  economical  in  practicing  it  in  this.  He 
drives  a  sharp  trade  with  religion.  Should  he  profess  reli- 
gious belief  for  saving  purposes  now,  he  would  be  expected 
to  practice  accordingly;  but  if  he  puts  off  profession  till 
the  dying  time  he  will  not  have  to  practice  it.  The  longer 
he  lives  without  this  profession,  provided  he  has  notice  in 
time  to  make  it  at  last,  the  sharper  the  trade.  The  ave- 
erage  man  is  in  nothing  so  economical  and  so  sharp  in 
trade  as  in  religion.  This  is  that  w^hich  makes  sudden 
death  a  calamity,  and  that  makes  doctors  let  their  patients 
linger  in  tormenting  pain.  No  one  has  come  back  to  tell 
the  efficacy  of  a  profession  of  faith  calculatingly  deferred  to 
the  last.  True^  we  are  taught  that  faith  is  all  sufficient, 
but  who  can  know  that  a  profession  forced  by  imminent 
death  is  faith? 

Much  is  made  of  the  instance  of  the  dying  thief  on  the 
cross,  to  whom,  because  he  rebuked  the  other  for  railing  at 
Jesus,  He  said,  "  This  day  shalt  thou  be  with  Me  in  Par- 
adise.''  But  men,  in  the  hardness  of  their  hearts,  have 
appropriated  this  as  a  license  to  continue  in  sin  to  the  last 
squeak  without  examining  the  instance  itself.  We  know 
not  if  the  rebuking  thief  was  especially  a  sinner.  He 
showed  a  tender  heart.  He  may  have  been  taken  for  no 
greater  sin  than  stealing  bread  to  stay  his  hunger.  But, 
anyhow,  he  had  never  before  heard  of  Jesus.  His  con- 
version at  his  first  sight  of  Jesus  and  Jesus*  assurance  to 
him  of  salvation  can  give  no  assurance  to  those  sinners 
who  have  known  of  Jesus'"all  their  lives  and  have  sharply 
reckoned  on  putting  off  their  submission  to  the  last  min- 
ute. There  is  reason  to  doubt  the  success  of  a  plan  delib- 
erately made  to  cheat  God  out  of  service  all  of  one's  life, 
and  to  sneak  into  heaven  by  a  dying  profession. 


120  HOW  AND  WHEN  TO  DIE. 

That  is  a  wonderful  exhibition  of  the  dignity  of  man 
when  grave  and  reverend  seigniors^  scholars,  statesmen, 
as  they  come  to  the  point  of  death,  call  in  a  minister  or  a 
priest,  and  say  that  his  religion  has  in  all  their  lives  had  the 
assent  of  their  reason,  and  now  they  desire  to  make  a  pro- 
fession of  faith  in  order  to  seize  on  saving  grace.  What  a 
confession  of  sharp  practice  !  If  it  were  not  for  the  chances 
of  this  chiseling  trade  on  the  Divine  mercies,  sudden  and 
unlooked-for  death  would  be  best  for  the  dying  and  the 
surviving.  There  is  this  consolation  to  all  :  the  world 
goes  on  as  well  without  them.  No  matter  how  great  a 
place  they  think  they  fill,  their  dropping  out  leaves  no 
void.  Persons  who  thought  much  of  themselves  have  been 
dying  ever  since  the  world  began,  yet  it  has  gone  on  with- 
out any  jar  in  its  diurnal  revolutions. 

Of  all  modes  of  dying,  that  of  the  murderer  on  the 
gallows  is  most  blessed  to  himself,  and  most  edifying  to  the 
living.  Having  due  notice  of  the  time  of  departure,  he 
packs  his  spiritual  gripsack  with  as  timely  calculation  as 
he  who  takes  a  railroad  train.  Economical  to  the  last,  he 
does  not  begin  to  pack  till  all  the  law's  delays  and  all 
chances  for  reprieve  are  exhausted.  Then,  when  he  hears 
the  sound  of  the  setting  up  of  the  gallows,  he  turns  to  the 
spiritual  business.  Spiritual  mediators  ply  him  with  their 
labors  to  fix  him  for  swift  passage  to  the  heavenly  man- 
sions. Women  come  and  sing  spiritual  hymns  at  him.  He 
becomes  such  an  edifying  Christian  that  they  think  he 
ought  to  live  as  an  example.  Soft-headed  women  of  both 
sexes  intercede  with  the  Governor  to  pardon  him,  or  to 
commute  the  sentence,  which  would  quickly  put  an  end 
to  this  edifying  piety. 

He  goes  upon  the  gallows  as  one  of  the  sanctified,  as  a 
pious  hero,  as  one  whom  God  has  pardoned  and  accepted, 
and  therefore  as  a  reproach  to  human  justice.     Murder  is 


HOW  AND   WHEN  TO   DIE.  131 

made  lovely  when  it  brings  such  a  good  ending.  But  this 
most  beautiful  death  is  after  all  only  an  incident.  He  does 
not  do  the  murder  for  the  purpose  of  dying  in  this  blessed 
"way.  He  intends  to  escape  by  secresy  or  flight .  If  he 
were  to  do  it  for  the  sake  of  the  happy  death,  he  would 
put  it  off,  as  other  men  do  repentance,  as  long  as  he  could. 
Therefore  are  mankind  left  to  envy  the  blissful  translation 
of  murderers  without  the  practicability  of  enjoying  its 
advantages.  They  must  get  along  as  well  as  they  can  in 
the  modes  of  natural  dying — i.  e.,  at  the  hands  of  the 
doctors.  H  rightly  viewed,  there  is  much  to  make  living 
till  death  from  old  age  undesirable;  much  to  reconcile  us 
and  our  friends  to  our  death  before  decay;  much  to  make 
sudden  and  unlooked-for  death  preferable,  provided  we  do 
not  drive  a  sharp  trade  with  salvation;  and  much  to  com- 
mend in  the  facilities  which  the  modern  conveniences  have 
made  for  our  sudden  taking-off. 


XXY. 

EISE  AKD  FALL  OF  "WOMAN'S  DRESS  RE- 
FORM. 

TRADITION  delights  in  great  discoveries  by  trains  of 
thought  fired  by  some  seeming  accident,  which  to 
the  common  mind  has  no  relation  to  the  consequence. 
Newton,  lying  under  a  sour  apjile  tree,  hit  on  the  organ 
of  gravity  by  a  falling  apple,  instantly  discovered  that 
the  tendency  of  things  to  tumble  together  is  the  great 
principle  that  keeps  the  all  things  in  place.  Likewise  a 
small  and  seemingly  accidental  event  fired  the  train  of 
thought  in  the  mind  of  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton,  which 
brought  forth  the  grand  idea  of  woman's  dress  reform  as 
fundamental  to  woman's  equal  rights. 

When  the  chosen  band  of  the  first  apostlesses  of  wo- 
man's rights  came  to  the  outer  walls  of  the  Wesleyan 
Chapel  in  Seneca  Falls,  N.  Y.,  in  the  revolutionary  year 
1848,  to  organize  the  first  meeting  ever  called  in  this 
movement,  and  when  they  found  the  door  bolted  on  the 
inside,  in  the  face  of  a  curious  multitude,  and  when  no 
female  volunteered  to  scale  a  window  and  draw  the  bolts, 
and  they  had  to  solicit  a  male  person  to  rescue  from  defeat 
this  war  on  men,  the  logical  mind  of  that  reraarka1)]c 
woman  perceived  that  there  was  a  defect  at  the  very  seat 
of  the  cause,  and  that  woman,  thus  disabled  before  man  in 
great  emergencies,  and  still  compelled  to  fall  back  to  him 
for  relief,  could  never  logically  claim  equality  with  him. 

Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  in  "The  Data  of  Ethics,"  dis- 
cussing upon  the  profound  doctrine  that  "correlatives  im- 
ply one  another,"  remarks:  "Beyond  the  primary  truth 

133 


RISE  AND   FALL  OF   WOMAN'S   DRESS   REFORM.        133 

that  no  idea  of  a  whole  can  be  framed  without  a  nascent 
idea  of  parts  constituting  it,  and  that  no  idea  of  a  part 
can  be  framed  without  a  nascent  idea  of  some  whole  to 
which  it  belongs,  there  is  the  secondary  truth  that  tliere 
can  be  no  correct  idea  of  a  part  without  a  correct  idea  of 
the  correlative  whole." 

The  moral  of  this  lies  in  the  application.  When  the 
great  movement  of  woman's  rights  was  almost  strangled 
atbirtR,  because  no  woman  could  be  induced  to  scale  the 
breach  to  draw  the  bolts  which  barred  its  delivery,  the 
process  of  correlative  ideas  led  that  great  woman's  mind 
instantaneously  from  breach  to  breeches.  Thus  did  she 
discover  that  dress  reform  and  woman's  rights  are  correl- 
ative. 

That  dress  reform  and  woman's  equal  rights  are  one 
and  inseparable,  is  apparent  to  every  logical  mind.  As 
well  might  a  man  in  shackles  claim  equal  ability  with 
freemen,  as  women,  fettered  by  a  form  of  dress  which  im- 
poses a  disability  in  every  line  of  action,  assert  equal 
rights  with  men,  founded  on  equal  capacity.  Woman, 
humbled  before  man  in  all  human  activities  liy  the  con- 
finement of  dress;  incessantly  obliged  to  call  on  him  for 
relief;  made  inferior  to  him  in  all  competition — will  assert 
her  equality  in  vain.  She  can  not,  like  the  enslaved  negro, 
assert  the  equal  rights  which  belong  to  equal  capacity  to 
do;  she  has  to  plead  for  them  \vhile  confessing  her  inability 
to  compete  with  man,  because  of  a  dress  which  both  fetters 
and  enervates  her.  The  seat  of  this  difference  of  clothes 
is  in  the  trousers;  therefore,  trousers  and  woman's  equal 
rights  are  one  and  inseparable. 

In  all  promulgations  of  advanced  doctrines  there  are 
some  who  perceive  the  truth,  and  yet  who  can  not  receive 
it  all,  nor  stand  up  to  its  logical  sequences.  So  in  the 
woman's  rights  movement  there  are  some  who,  while  join- 


124       RISE   AND  FALL  OF  WOMAN'S   DKESS  REFORM. 

ing  in  the  general  declaration  of  war  on  man,  are  held 
back  by  feminine  weakness.  This  has  caused  a,  lamentable 
division  in  the  leaderesses,  and  a  drawing  apart  of  some  who 
try  to  shove  by  the  question  of  dress  reform  by  saying  they 
will  take  up  one  thing  at  a  time,  and  will  first  achieve  the 
ballot,  and  after  that  will  take  up  the  other  parts  of  the 
cause.  These  h^ve  formed  a  society  which  shuns  those 
that  have  taken  up  the  whole  cause  by  putting  on  the  gar- 
ments of  equality. 

As  well  may  they  say  they  will  learn  to  swim  before 
going  near  the  water  as  that  they  will  achieve  equal  polit- 
ical rights  with  man  upon  the  ground  of  equal  capacity 
while  confining  themselves  to  a  disability.  As  well  might 
they  say  they  will  not  take  up  the  question  of  the  reform 
of  marriage  until  they  have  gained  equal  rights  under  the 
marriage  which  subjects  them  to  man.  As  well  say  they 
will  suppress  their  demand  for  a  female  Bible  until  they 
have  obtained  equal  political  rights,  whereas  they  have 
resolved  in  their  platform  that  man's  usurpation  of  the 
office  of  transmitting,  translating  and  expounding  the 
Scriptures  has  enabled  him  to  make  the  Bible  an  instru- 
ment to  enslave  woman.  All  these  correlative  parts  of 
woman's  rights  must  go  together,  or  all  will  fall.  To- 
gether, they  make  a  solid  power;  divided,  each  is  a  force  to 
break  down  the  other.  The  apple,  hitting  Newton  in  a 
soft  spot,  did  not  start  a  greater  train  of  thought  than  did 
woman's  failure  at  the  breach  in  Mrs.  Cady  Stanton,  when 
it  led  her  straight  to  the  breeches  as  the  base  of  woman's 
emancipation. 

That  she  did  look  behind  her  after  she  had  put  her 
hand  to  the  plough,  and  did  shuck  off  the  reformed  gar- 
ments after  she  had  made  them  famous,  shall  not  forfeit 
the  praise  she  earned  by  setting  this  cause  in  motion. 
Movements  that  are  founded  in  truth  have  this  property 


RISE  AND  FALL  OF  WOMAN's   DRESS  REFORM.       125 

of  final  perseverance,  that  they  are  fertilized  by  the  blood 
of  martyrs,  and  advanced  by  the  teachings  of  the  faithful, 
while  on  the  other  hand  they  are  never  extinguished  by 
defection  or  betrayal.  The  good  which  Mrs.  Elizabeth 
Cady  Stanton  did  by  displaying  her  broad  person  in  the 
costume  called  the  Bloomer,  lived  after  she  had  cast  it  off. 
Even  if  this  was  because  of  the  weakness  of  female  vanity, 
yet  it  shall  not  bring  harsh  judgment  upon  her.  Some  of 
the  greatest  men  and  women  have  been  affected  by  small 
vanity  of  personal  appearance.  Csesar  was  a  dandy; 
Queen  Elizabeth  a  cormorant  of  flattery  of  her  beauty; 
Napoleon  postured. 

The  greatness  of  a  woman's  mind  in  putting  on  this 
mannish  costume  is  relative,  according  to  her  form  and  the 
appearance  she  makes  in  it.  Philosophers  of  those  ancient 
times,  when  manners  did  not  bar  such  investigation,  have 
written  that  the  form  of  the  male  man  is  such  that  gar- 
ments conforming  thereto  have  that  symmetry  which  is 
pleasing  to  the  eye,  while,  on  the  contrary,  woman  is 
relieved  by  a  draped  costume  which  changes  her  form. 
Besides  the  prejudice  of  custom,  there  is  a  difference  of 
form  which  makes  the  putting  on  of  such  clothes  an  act  of 
heroism.  And  notwithstanding  the  draped  seclusion  an 
idea  has  got  about  that  women  differ  largely  in  form. 
Therefore,  the  costume  act  is  more  heroic  in  some  than  in 
others. 

The  woman  who  narrates  to  the  Woman's  Journal  the 
beginning  of  this  great  movement,  represents  that  Mrs. 
Bloomer,  whose  name  it  took,  although  she  followed  Mrs. 
Stanton,  did  not  look  hideously  in  it ;  but  her  description 
of  the  appearance  of  Mrs.  Stanton  gives  an  idea  that  in 
her  it  was  an  act  of  the  highest  heroism.     Thus; 

"Never  shall  I  forget  that  first  appearance!  Mrs.  Stan- 
ton is  not  slight  or  sylph-like  in  her  proportions;  she  is, 


126       RISE   AND   PALL   OP   WOMAN's   DRESS   REFORM. 

not  to  put  too  fine  a  point  on  it,  the  reverse.  Imagine  her 
then  in  a  full  black  satin  frock  cut  off  at  the  knee,  with 
Turkish  trousers  of  the  same  material,  her  wrap  a  double 
broche  shawl,  and  on  her  head  the  hideous  great  bonnet 
then  in  fashion.  She  was  accompanied  by  Mrs.  Miller  in 
the  same  dress,  and  followed  by  a  crowd  of  boys,  yelling, 
singing  and  laughing,  while  every  door  and  window  was 
lined  with  staring  faces." 

Mrs.  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton  announced  that  she  had 
assumed  this  dress  for  life;  but  after  a  time  she  became 
satisfied  with  these  popular  ovations,  and  put  it  off  with  a 
great  sigh  of  relief.  But  the  cause  of  dress  reform  which 
she  set  on  foot  will  not  die,  for  the  logic  of  woman's  mind 
will  ever  fetch  her  back  to  the  realization  that  the  woman's 
movement  must  be  equipped  with  trousers  before  it  can 
move  on. 


XXVI. 

WIDOWERS. 

TO  THE  editor: 

*'  •"  I  ""HE  complete  answer  which  the  Gazette  gave  to  the 

1  young  professional  man  without  practice,  who 
asked  if  he  had  better  marry  a  rich  girl,  encourages  me 
to  ask.  Is  it  good  for  a  widower  to  marry?  X." 

The  generality  of  the  form  of  this  question  shows  con- 
fidence that  our  exposition  will  he  so  comprehensive  as  to 
embrace  the  inquirer's  special  case,  without  requiring  him 
to  expose  his  secret  by  a  particular  statement.  The  con- 
fidence is  not  misplaced.  We  look  for  the  time  when  each 
subscriber  shall  seek  the  editor  as  guide,  philosopher,  and 
friend. 

Young  persons  who  get  their  idea  of  love  from  romances 
start  out  with  the  notion  that  the  heart  is  capable  of  but 
one  love,  and,  of  course,  that  this  never  dies.  They  gen- 
erally outgrow  this  spring  verdure,  and  find  that  this  capa- 
city of  the  heart,  as  of  the  other  viscera,  brain  and  mus- 
cles, develops  with  exercise.  And  since  the  life  of  man 
has-been  shortened  from  nine  or  ten  hundred  years  to  three- 
score and  ten,  the  longevity  seems  to  be  insufficient  to 
enable  scientists  to  find  the  age  at  which  susceptibility  to 
love  ceases.  But  if  a  person  who  has  loved  and  lost  finds 
that  he  loves  again,  or  feels  the  premonitory  symptoms 
thereof,  that  is  enough  for  him,  and  he  need  not  stop  to 
inquire  into  general  principles. 

The  doubt  whether  it  is  good  for  a  widower  to  marry  is 
wholly  modern,  and  is  caused  by  tlirec  things  which  are 
the  fruits  of  modern  civilization.     First,  the  invention  of 

127 


128  WIDOWERS. 

a  soul  for  woman.  This  is  a  modern  discovery,  and  has 
yet  spread  but  to  the  minor  part  of  the  earth's  population. 
Second,  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  the 
bodies  of  such  as  have  souls.  Third,  monogamy,  which  in 
Christian  lands  limits  the  man  to  one  wife  at  a  time.  The 
first  two  make  that  which  is  called  death  merely  a  migra- 
tion, with  a  promise  of  rejoining.  It  is  merely  a  tem- 
porary separation  from  bed  and  board,  with  certainty  of 
reunion.  Thus  it  is  customary  to  put  on  our  tombstones 
this  declaration  of  our  faith :  "  Not  lost,  but  gone  be- 
fore." 

This  views  the  departea  one  as  watching  and  waiting 
over  the  border  for  the  bereaved  relict  to  travel  out  the 
days  of  his  pilgrimage,  and  come  where  partings  shall  be 
no  more;  and  it  makes  a  new  love  and  another  marriage  a 
crushing  of  the  heart  of  the  waiting  one,  and  the  essential 
act  of  bigamy.  The  difficulty  of  this  has  not  been  sur- 
mounted in  reason,  however  much  it  is  shuffled  off  in 
practice.  The  Sadducees  asked.  Whose  wife  shall  she  be 
in  the  resurrection,  who  has  had  seven  husbands?  The 
answer  was:  When  they  shall  rise  from  the  dead  they 
neither  marry  nor  are  given  in  marriage,  but  are  as  the 
angels  which  are  in  heaven.  This  leaves  the  question, 
how  are  the  angels,  and  what  are  the  relations  there  of 
those  who  were  married  here? 

The  preacher  consoles  the  bereaved  mother  by  saying 
she  shall  rejoin  her  babe,  and  one  of  the  great  joys  of 
heaven  is  pictured  in  the  loved  ones  there  awaiting  us. 
These  are  described  as  so  many  chords  reaching  back  to 
our  hearts,  drawing  us  thither.  The  mother's  love  for  her 
babe  is  personal.  It  is  for  that  babe,  not  for  babies  in 
general.  That  little  helpless  creature  possesses  her  whole 
being.  The  rejoining  which  she  looks  to  is  of  the  same 
affection.     If  it  were  to  be  merely  spiritual  in  the  sense  of 


WIDOWERS.  129 

being  abstracted  from  the  affections  that  existed  in  the 
body  here,  then  their  several  identities  would  be  lost,  and 
the  resurrection  would  be  a  disappointment  to  that  longing 
affection  which  is  here  consoled  by  the  promise  of  reunion. 
A  resurrection  in  which  they  were  no  more  to  each  other 
than  to  others,  and  in  which  they  were  divested  of  earthly 
affections  and  relations,  would  not  be  a  resurrection  of 
personal  identity,  but  of  another  person. 

The  preacher  does  not  so  freely  console  the  bereaved 
husband  with  the  ])romise  of  rejoining  the  departed,  nor 
does  he  paint  to  him  the  picture  of  her  waiting  and  watch- 
ing and  longing  over  the  border.  He  does  not  venture  on 
this  method  of  consoling  unless  the  bereaved  is  so  far  ad- 
vanced in  life  as  to  make  sure  that  he  will  keep  his  eye  on 
this  hope.  And,  as  was  before  remarked,  the^  present  short 
span  of  life  has  not  enabled  men  of  science  to  tix  the  age 
at  which  the  heart  is  not  susceptible  to  a  new  flame.  Yet 
the  love  of  man  and  wife  is  believed  to  be  a  positive  thing, 
and  to  enter  very  largely  into  their  being  and  identity. 
The  marriage  service  pronounces  them  one  flesh.  If  the 
wife  is  resurrected  in  her  personal  identity,  she  must  retain 
the  affections  which  made  so  large  a  part  of  her  being. 
And  if  in  the  resurrection  they  are  to  be  no  more  to  each 
other  than  to  others,  then  the  change  is  the  same  as  if 
somebody  else,  and  not  they,  had  been  resurrected.  That 
would  take  away  the  hope  of  the  joys  of  rejoining  as  our 
human  minds  understand  it. 

Before  the  invention  of  a  soul  for  woman,  there  was  no 
difficulty  of  this  kind  as  to  widowers  marrying;  for  al- 
though not  even  Mohammedans  or  pagans  could  conceive 
of  heaven  without  Avoman,  yet  they  had  a  new  lot  specially 
created.  And  on  the  part  of  the  man  this  question  could 
not  exist,  even  with  a  soul  for  woman,  and  a  resurrection, 
if  it  we  not  for  the  limitation  of  monogamy,  although  it 
9 


130  AVIDOWERS. 

would  be  the  same  in  case  of  the  widow.  We  state  to  our 
inquiring  friend  the  perj^lexities  of  his  case,  without  at- 
tempting to  solve  them.  But  we  observe  that  devout  be- 
lievers in  these  doctrines  marry  again,  and  we  suppose  that 
an  all-confiding  trust  in  Providence  leads  them  to  believe 
that  in  some  way  or  otlier  these  difficulties  will  be  straight- 
ened out  so  as  to  give  the  highest  happiness  in  the  future 
state. 

In  this  we  may  grant  that  our  finite  minds  can  not 
comprehend  all  things,  and  that  that  which  now  seems 
past  finding  out  may  become  very  easy  when  our  minds 
shall  havQ,  been  emancipated  from  the  coarser  parts  of 
their  earthly  tabernacle.  Our  inquiring  friend  may  be 
assured  that  he  is  in  the  safe  way  when  he  follows  the  ex- 
ample of  so  many  devout  men. 

With  regard  to  the  simple  bearing  of  each  one's  experi- 
ence on  the  question  of  marrying  again,  it  is  always  affirm- 
ative. If  ihfi  widower  has  had  a  good  experience  in  mar- 
riage, he  naturally  desires  to  repeat ;  if  a  bad  experience 
he  feels  that  he  has  not  had  the  happiness  which  every 
man  believes  to  be  attainable  in  the  married  state,  and 
therefore  that  he  should  try  again. 

The  genius  of  the  French  people  leads  them  to  reduce 
all  human  movements  to  scientific  method.  A  Dr.  Bertil- 
lon  has  given  much  pains  to  the  gathering  of  statistics  to 
show  the  influence  of  marriage  on  men's  longevity.  He 
has  found  that  the  mortality  of  widowers  between  the  ages 
of  twenty-five  and  thirty  is  alarmingly  greater  than  of  men 
of  the  same  years  who  have  not  been  married.  Thus  of 
one  thousand  single  men  only  six  die  yearly,  while  of  a 
thousand  widowers  of  the  same  years  twenty-two  die 
yearly.  We  would  not  advise  a  widower  to  marry  to  pro- 
long his  life,  unless  assured  that  his  particular  life  is  worth 
prolonging.     The  generality  of  men  live  much  too  long. 


WIDOWERS.  131 

And  the  extent  of  this  valuable  article  will  not  permit  us 
at  this  time  to  examine  the  question  whether  this  greater 
rate  of  mortality  of  widowers  than  of  single  men  is  be- 
cause of  the  breakage  of  the  heart,  or  the  loss  of  domestic 
comfort  and  care,  or  from  the  taking  away  of  the  tonic  of 
constant  conjugal  discipline. 

Whether  a  widower  would  better  marry  a  widow  or  a 
single  woman  is  a  question  whose  adequate  examination 
would  alone  require  a  paper  of  considerable  length  ;  there- 
fore we  shall  defer  that  until  a  case  among  our  subscribers 
sends  us  the  inquiry.  Our  widower  inquirer  will  perceive 
that  while  this  exhaustive  answer  gives  him  much  to  think 
of,  and  perhaps  leads  him  into  regions  of  thought  which  he 
had  not  before  penetrated,  yet  the  general  result  of  our 
exposition  is  to  let  him  follow  the  bent  of  his  own  inclina- 
tions. Much  observation  of  the  ways  of  this  peculiar 
genius  leads  us  to  the  conclusion  that  they  will  land  him 
in  the  haven  of  matrimony. 


XXYII. 

THE  TROUSERS  MOVEMENT. 

LONDON  society  journals  have  remarked  two  recent 
^  innovations  in  that  part  of  woman's  dress  which  is 
below  the  belt.  These  are  remotely  an  approach  toward 
trousers  —  a  garment  which  seems  to  all  advanced  think- 
ing women  the  ultimate  of  dress  reform,  and  the  sine  qua  non 
of  eqaul  rights.  One  of  these  is  called  the  divided  skirt,  and 
is  described  as  a  skirt  stitched  together  up  and  down  the 
middle,  so  as  to  make,  in  effect,  a  skirt  for  each  leg.  The 
fashion  which  has  made  the  skirt  like  one  large  trouser 
leg  may  have  made  transition  easy  to  a  skirt  fastened 
together  in  this  way  in  two  large  trouser  legs.  Perhaps  it 
is  idle  to  reason  on  taste  in  this  affair,  but  it  appears  to  be 
the  reverse  of  progress  toward  that  freedom  of  movement 
which  is  allowed  by  trousers.  Indeed,  it  is  an  increase  of 
the  incumbrance  of  the  skirt,  making  it  a  fetter. 

Nor  does  it  seem  to  propose  any  reduction  of  the  weight 
of  the  skirt,  for,  besides  the  size  requisite  to  each  part  of 
the  skirt  to  permit  movement,  and  of  the  upper  part  to 
correspond  and  to  permit  sitting,  the  convolutions  re- 
quisite to  drape  the  division  would  probably  increase  the 
weight  of  the  garment.  The  divided  skirt  may  have 
remotely  the  sentiment  of  trousers,  but  it  is  sentiment 
without  any  approach  to  the  reality.  It  seems  to  have  the 
trousers  aspiration  at  the  bottom,  but  has  made  it  a  delu- 
sion and  a  snare.  So  egregious  a  failure  tends  to  discourage 
earnest  effort. 

The  other  is  described  as  real  trousers,  of  the  usual 
cut,  save  the  variation  of  the  female  form,  worn  under  the 

133 


THE   TROUSERS    MOVEMENT.  133 

skirts.  As  a  preparatory  step  to  dispensing  with  tlie  skirt, 
this  may  be  rational;  or  as  an  experiment  to  find  how  this 
garment  feels,  before  going  further;  or  as  a  private  indulg- 
ence of  the  idea,  the  sentiment  of  trousers;  but  if  skii-ts 
are  to  continue,  the  trousers  will  double  the  burden.  As- 
piration for  the  unattainable  has  a  pregnant  fancy  wliirli 
paints  it  with  delights;  but  in  reality  trousers  are  not  tin- 
i  supreme  good  to  those  who  wear  them.  They  have  weight , 
and  must  be  held  up  by  suspenders,  and  these  are  a  per- 
'  ceptible  pull  on  the  shoulders.  They  have  some  strain  in 
sitting  down.  The  female  conformation  would  increase  in 
the  sitting-down  strain,  unless  they  were  much  enlarged  in 
that  part,  and  this  would  increase  the  weight,  if,  indeed, 
such  expansion  did  not  greatly  impair  the  sentiment  of 
trousers. 

Obviously  women  can  not  mitigate  the  burden  of  skirts 
by  adding  thereunto  trousers.  To  make  trousers  a  rclii'f 
will  require  a  reduction  of  the  skirts  to  one,  and  that 
without  fullness,  and  shortened.  Something  like  this  wps 
tried  in  the  beginning  of  the  dress  reform,  but  women  were 
not  able  to  receive  it  because  it  was  such  a  cutting  down  of 
their  appearance.  Is  there  not  a  fundamental  error  in  this 
aspiration,  in  the  idea  that  man  and  woman  are  so  nearly 
the  same  that  a  form  of  garment  which  is  best  for  one  is 
best  for  the  other?  lias  not  the  imjjortance  of  this  trouscr 
movement  been  exaggerated  by  a  notion  that  it  is  mixed  up 
with  woman's  equal  rights? 

Scientists  have  observed  that  woman  is  not  formed  lii.:e 
man.  Her  different  conformation  below  the  belt  is  admir- 
ably adapted  to  voluminous  drapery,  which  man's  is  not. 
On  the  other  hand  her  form  is  not  adapted  to  trousois, 
either  for  beauty  of  proportion  or  ease  of  wearing.  This 
may  be  disputed  by  particularizing  some  of  the  female 
statues  and  some  young  and  some  lank  women;   but  it  is 


134  THE   TROUSERS   MOVEMENT. 

necessary  that  the  female  form  of  dress  should  fit  all  women. 
Many  are  seen  who  appear  grand  in  proportion,  and  even 
graceful  in  movement,  in  full  and  draped  skirts,"  who 
would  not  be  elegant  in  trousers.  For  the  effect  of  pos- 
terior expansiveness  in  trousers  is  different  from  that  of 
expansiveness  in  flowing  draperies.  There  is  an  elegance 
in  this  which  causes  passing  women  to  look  back  on  one 
another,  to  admire  the  hang  of  the  draped  skirt;  but  such 
retrospect  of  trousers,  expanded  to  fit  the  female  form, 
would  excite  different  emotions. 

To  discourage  any  female  aspiration  is  an  ungracious 
task,  yet  it  must  be  said  that  there  is  a  fundamental  error 
in  the  trousers  movement.  Mankind  are  the  clothes-wear- 
ing animals.  Natiire  meant  them  to  wear  clothes,  and  gave 
them  hands  to  make,  and  taste  to  design  them.  .  Nature 
evidently  designed  women  to  be  draped  below  the  belt; 
gave  her  a  form  on  which  drapery  hangs  beautifully,  and 
around  which  it  disposes  itself  gracefully;  a  form  which 
supports  skirts,  and  probably  bears  them  more  easily  than 
it  would  trousers.  It  did  not  give  her  a  form  for  trousers. 
She  would  find  them  a  burden,  and  in  several  ways  objec- 
tionable in  the  matters  of  comfort  and  health,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  grace  and  beauty.  These  observations  may  discour- 
age a  fond  aspiration,  but  they  are  kindly  meant  to  abate 
female  discontent. 


XXYIII. 
LABOR-SAYING  MxVCIIINERY  AN  EYIL. 

THE  displacement  of  human  labor  by  machinery  is 
attracting  the  attention  of  'prentice  hands  in  polit- 
ical economy,  and  has  led  them  to  think  that  all  which  we 
call  ijrogress  is  on  the  wrong  tack.  The  process  of  reason- 
ing in  this  is  so  exact  and  arithmetical  that  it  may  be  called 
scientific.  Take  for  example  the  reaper.  With  a  span  of 
horses  the  farmer  sits  and  reaps  as  much  grain  in  a  day  as 
seven  men  would  "cradle."  Is  it  not  figuratively  demon- 
strated that  that  reaper  throws  six  cradles  out  of  work,  and 
reduces  them  to  tramps?  So  a  threshing  machine,  with  a 
little  steam  engine  and  six  hands,  will  thresh  as  much  in  a 
day  as  forty  flailers  ;  thus  thirty-four  men  with  flails  are 
thrown  out  of  emi^loy. 

.  These  scientific  statistics  are  equally  fearful  in  every 
branch  of  labor.  In  all  these  man's  invention  is  destroy- 
ing man's  livelihood,  and  the  new  political  economy  makes 
human  genius  a  process  of  social  suicide.  The  factory 
spinning  and  weaving  machines  will  each  spin  and  weave 
as  much  cloth  as  maybe  a  hundred  good  wives  would  make 
with  spinning  wheel  and  hand  loom.  Thus  each  machine 
takes  away  the  occasion  of  a  hundred  good  wives.  The 
sawmill,  with  water  or  steam  power,  and  a  couple  of  men, 
cuts  as  many  boards  in  a  day  as  a  hundred  men  could  cut 
with  a  handsaw,  or  a  two-man  pit-saw.  Thus  eighty-eight 
men  are  thrown  out  of  sawing  work.  The  farmer  of  our 
time  is  not  the  he  of  the  osculatory  plays  of  our  childhood, 
who  sows  his  seed  "  broadcast  "  with  the  hand,  from  a  bag 
strung  upon  his  shoulder,  and  then  turns  round  and  views 

135 


136  LABOR-SAVING   MACHINERY   AN"   EVIL. 

his  land,  and  waits  for  a  partner;  but  now  he  sits  on  a  seed 
drill  with  wheels,  and  drives  a  span  of  horses,  and  sows  as 
much  land  in  a  day  as  half  a  dozen  men  would  sow  by  hand 
and  cover  with  a  harrow.  This  makes  the  harrowing  tale 
of  five  men  with  large  families  turned  out  of  work  by  one 
machine  drill. 

The  sewing  machine  is  a  still  more  harrowing  invention, 
by  reason  of  its  enhancing  the  hard  fate  of  women.  The 
invention  of  clothes,  which  came  in  through  woman's  fault, 
has  been  a  blessing  to  women  by  continuing  a  need  for 
them  after  the  earth  had  become  populated  and  the  orig- 
inal need  had  greatly  diminished.  But  in  an  evil  hour  the 
devil  instigated  man  to  invent  the  sewing  machine,  one  of 
which,  as  we  learn  by  their  seductive  circulars,  will  sew  as 
much  in  a  day  as  a  dozen  women  can  do  with  the  hand 
needle.  But  we  will  allow  half  for  the  exuberance  of  lan- 
guage, and  say  half  a  dozen.  This  leaves  five  sewing  women 
reduced  to  the  state  of  surplus  by  each  machine.  It  affects 
not  only  the  employment  and  wages  of  single  women, 
but  the  demand  on  them  for  general  family  uses.  And 
sewing  is  peculiarly  the  recourse  of  widows  whom  men 
unconscionably  load  with  children,  and  then  leave  unpro- 
vided. Averaging  widows  of  five  children  each,  one  sew- 
ing machine  deprives  twenty-five  children  and  five  widows 
of  bread. 

We  might  go  through  the  whole  list  of  machines  in  this 
way,  and  show  how  each  is  robbing  mankind  of  employ- 
ment. And  the  anticipation  of  the  future  is  a  multiplica- 
tion of  the  realities  of  the  past.  That  which  invention 
has  achieved  in  labor-saving  machines  gives  unbounded 
anticipation  of  future  achievements;  and  our  sucking  ijoli- 
tical  economists  reckon  that  in  the  course  of  this  and  the 
first  quarter  of  the  twentieth  century  machinery  will  auto- 
matically do  all  the  work,  and  there  will  be  little  or  no  call 


LABOR-SAYING   MACHINERY   AN   EVIL.  137 

for  human  labor.  Thus  the  progress  of  the  age,  of  wliich  we 
are  wont  to  boast,  is  in  reality  to  destruction.  There  will 
be  no  use  for  mankind  as  producers;  and  as  without  pro- 
ducing they  will  have  no  means  to  buy  for  consumption, 
the  working  classes  will  all  be  surplus  poj^ulation,  and  an 
evil  to  be  got  rid  of.  As  the  rainbow  is  a  standing  sign 
that  the  deluge  sball  not  come  again,  the  only  available 
remedy  is  a  general  burning.  Thus  by  human  invention 
are  we  fetching  on  the  world's  conflagration. 

But  the  scientists  do  not  go  near  to  the  bottom.  The 
grain  cradle  with  which  they  comijare  the  horse-power 
reaper  is  itself  a  labor-saving  machine,  and  has  thrown  its 
quota  of  w^orkmen  out  of  emjiloy.  One  man  with  a  cradle 
can  reap  as  much  as  six  men  with  a  sickle.  Thus  each 
cradle  took  away  the  subsistence  of  five  reapers,  who,  with 
their  wives  and  children  might  make  forty  souls,  and  as 
many  mouths.  But  the  sickle  is  a  mighty  labor-saving 
machine.  It  threw  a  larger  proportion  of  men  out  of  em- 
ploy than  any  subsequent  improvement  in  reaping.  One 
man  with  a  sickle  would  reap  as  much  grain  as  a  dozen 
men  could  pull  up  by  the  roots,  or  twist  off  by  hand.  The 
destruction  began  with  the  invention  of  the  sickle  or  other 
knife,  and  no  reform  can  reach  the  evil  which  does  not 
abolish  that,  and  let  them  pluck  up  the  grain  by  hand. 

Likewise  the  flail  is  a  great  labor-saving  machine  over 
the  plain  stick,  torn  from  a  tree.  Several  men  went  out  of 
employ  on  each  flail.  And  the  stick  Avas  a  labor-sav- 
ing machine  over  rubbing  out  the  grain  between  the  hands. 
By  restoring  these  natural  methods,  each  workman  would 
have  full  employment  in  raising,  pulling  up,  and  rubbing 
out  the  grain  for  his  own  eating.  This  would  remove  the 
the  evils  of  surplus  laborers  in  all  that  line,  and  also  the 
evil  of  surplus  food,  and  of  the  producers  having  any  to 
spare.     The  hand  loom  and  hand-spinning  wheel  of  the 


138  LABOK-SAVING   MACHINERY  AN   EVIL. 

household  were  great  labor-saving  machines  over  hand 
twisting  and  plaiting,  and  must  have  thrown  out  of  work  a 
fearful  number  of  wives. 

Terribly  as  the  sewing  machine  has  deprived  women  of 
work,  it  has  not  been  so  bad  as  the  invention  of  the  liand 
steel  needle.  Before  that,  with  bone  needles — which  them- 
selves are  labor-saving  machines — or  with  no  piercing  tool 
but  their  teeth,  three  or  four  wives  might  be  sufficiently 
employed  in  making  up.  one  man's  rude  garments,  whereas 
such  facility  was  given  to  this  by  the  invention  of  the  steel 
needle  that  he  hardly  had  a  need  of  one  wife.  This  gives  us 
a  frightful  realization  of  the  number  of  wives  that  might 
have  been  but  for  the  invention  of  the  needle. 

The  invention  of  a  wheeled  vehicle  has  thrown  out  of 
employ  an  army  of  men  who  might  earn  a  living  for  them- 
selves and  large  families  by  carrying  things  on  their  backs. 
The  hand  or  pit-saw  was  a  labor-saving  invention  of  larger 
proportions  than  the  saw-mill.  Before  that  there  were  no 
boards,  save  such  as  were  hewn,  and  none  at  all  before  the 
invention  of  that  tremendous  labor-saving  machine, the  axe. 

Thus  if  we  look  through  every  branch  of  industry  from 
the  simplest  agricultural  to  the  most  complex  skilled  labor, 
we  shall  find  that  the  very  beginning  of  work  has  been, to 
throw  workmen  out  of  employment;  and  that  as  it  has  pro- 
gressed it  has  the  more  and  more  taken  away  emjDloyment 
from  men  and  women.  By  the  rights  and  logic  of  this  pol- 
itical economy  the  greater  part  of  the  workmen,  should  be 
without  work  —  the ''working  class  "should  be  the  idle 
class.  Somehow  it  has  not  worked  that  way.  Somehow 
with  the  invention  of  labor-saving  machinery  employment 
of  workmen  has  increased,  and  with  all  our  progress  in  this 
line  there  was  never  a  time  when  all  who  will  work  had  fuller 
employment  than  now. 

But  a  system  of  political  economy  which  founds  itself 


LABOR-SAVING   MACHINERY   AN   EVIL.  130 

on  a  scientific  basis  of  statistics  is  not  to  he  cast  off  because 
the  facts  are  contrary.  Scientifically  these  men  and  women 
are  out  of  employ,  and  if  not  so  in  fact  it  is  because  they 
are  not  in  harmony  witli  science.  And  these  pessimist  scien- 
tists can  give  good  reasons  for  these  vagariesof  mankind  from 
logical  results.  They  can  show  that  as  their  system,  which 
would  take  from  the  hand  of  man  every  tool,  would  give  to 
each  one  sufficient  emplo3mient  in  scratching  for  his  own 
living,  aud  would  make  each  one  the  consumer  of  all  he 
produced,  so  with  the  invention  of  machinery  the  consump- 
tion of  the  laborer  has  extended  into  all  the  products  of 
machine  labor,so  that  the  laborers  themselves  have  increased 
the  consumption  with  the  increase  of  production  by  ma- 
chinery. 

They  might  also  point  out  elements  not  included  in  their 
scientific  system,  such  as  the  vast  employment  given  to 
workmen  by  making  the  machinery  which  saves  labor,  and 
the  immensity  of  the  carrying  industry  and  of  other  multi- 
plied industries  which  have  been  created  by  this  immense 
increase  of  production  by  machinery.  Thus  they  can  dis- 
cover excuses  for  the  non-working  of  a  theory  which  seems 
so  complete  and  so  scientific.  And  j^erhaps  this  will  put 
into  the  noddles  of  these  beginners  in  the  science  of  public 
wealth  a  notion,  that  their  complete  theory,  founded  on  the 
scientific  basis  of  statistics  and  arithmetical  proof S;  took  in 
only  a  little  part  of  the  situation. 


XXIX. 

THE  DOG'S  DAT. 

"  Hear  you,  sir; 
What  is  the  reason  that  you  use  me  thus? 
I  loved  you  ever — But  it  is  no  matter: 
Let  Hercules  himself  do  what  he  may. 
The  cat  will  mew,  and  dog  will  have  his  day." 

THE  English  actor,  Irving,  whose  Hamlet  has  astonished 
the  natives  of  two  hemisplieres,  and  who  is  thriving 
upon  them  as  lustily  as  the  famous  calf  that  sucked  two  cows, 
and  grew  to  be  a  great  calf,  reads  the  last  line  in  the  above 
thus:  "And  dog  will  have  his  bay."  This  has  made 
homely  and  clear  to  many  minds  that  which  before  was 
beautifully  obscure.  We  could  give  reasons  as  plenty  as 
blackberries  against  this  change,  but  three  or  four  shall 
suffice  to  make  this  presumptuoiis  play  actor  wish  he  had 
expired  before  he  laid  his  impious  hands  on  the  sacred  text 
of  Shakespeare. 

For,  fourthly — taking  up  the  case  in  the  consecutive 
order  followed  by  the  sage  magistrate  of  Messina, — a 
poet,  having  all  the  mines  of  fancy  to  draw  from,  should 
be  bounteous;  but  this  version  makes  to  the  dog  the  stingy 
allowance  of  one  bay.  In  the  realms  of  the  imagination 
every  dog  should  have  unlimited  bay.  Lord  Dundreary, 
has  forcibly  illustrated  this  idea  in  his  criticism  of  the 
adage,  ''  Birds  of  a  feather  flock  together,"  in  which  he 
remarks  the  stinted  allowance  of  one  feather  to  a  whole  lot 
of  birds.  Shakespeare,  like  other  vagabonds,  liked  dogs, 
and  he  would  never  have  portioned  off  a  dog  with  but  one 
bay.     And  sixthly,  this  version  assumes  that  Shakespeare 

140 


THE   DOO'S   DAY.  141 

wrote  words  of  simple  and  plain  meaning,  wliicli  can  be 
seen  on  the  surface,  whereas  they  who  have  devoted  their 
minds  to  searching  Shakespeare  have  found  that  this  play- 
wright, who  wrote  or  cut,  padded  and  fitted  plays  for  the 
stage  of  his  time,  planted  deep  down  below  the  simple 
meanings  of  the  surface,  occult  philosophies  and  impene- 
trable mysteries,  to  forever  addle  the  wits  of  future  ages  in 
vain  effort  to  discover  their  meaning.  Therefore  could  he 
never  have  written  anything  whose  ultimate  meaning  is  so 
trite  as  that  dog  may  have  his  bay. 

Secondly,  the  search  for  an  incomprehensible  mystery 
in  some  simple  phrase  of  Shakespeare,  or  a  dispute  over 
different  readings  of  unmeaning  passages — of  which  one  is 
as  good  as  another — or  an  effort  to  put  sense  into  passages 
which  were  purposely  made  nonsense,  or  to  put  a  hidden 
meaning  in  a  trite  line,  is  regarded  by  those  that  have 
applied  their  minds  to  this  business  as  a  literary  work 
worthy  of  a  life's  devotion;  therefore  we  can  not  afford 
that  this  line  shall  be  taken  out  of  this  great  literary  field 
and  laid  on  the  shelf  as  settled,  and  settled,  too,  by  such  a 
plain  meaning,  which  is  as  if  a  spangled  circus  rider  should 
ride  the  arena  sitting  astride,  just  like  a  common  rid  or, 
instead  of  pirouetting  on  his  feet,  or  standing  on  his  head. 

Lastly,  and  to  conclude,  if  we  are  to  content  our  minds 
with  simple  sense,  we  can  do  better  than  to  give  dog  a 
bay;  for  the  saying,  "Every  dog  has  his  day,"  was  com- 
mon before  Shakespeare.  The  Princess,  afterward  Queen 
Elizabeth,  in  a  letter  to  Queen  Mary,  wrote,  '*As  a  doge 
hathe  a  day,  so  may  I."  In  the  '^  Interlude,"  printed  in 
1573,  is  this:  *' Well  if  It  chaunce  that  a  dogge  hathe  a 
day,"  etc.  There  are  other  instances  which  we  could  cite 
out  of  our  abundant  learning,  but  we  forbear.  These  show 
that  it  was  then  an  old  adage,  whose  origin  was  probably 
then  lost,  as  the  antiquaries  say,  in  the  mists  of  antiquity. 


143  THE    dog's   DAT. 

And  a  day  to  a  dog  is  a  generous  allowance;  for  day  is 
much  used  to  express  an  indefinite  period  of  time,  a  chance 
of  a  lifetime,  an  age,  an  epoch,  an  era,  or  countless  millions 
of  years,  such  as  Moses'  day  of  creation. 

But  in  the  third  place,  the  German  critics,  who  can  dive 
deeper  and  come  up  muddier  than  any  other,  and  who  find 
in  Shakespeare  abundant  material  for  their  turn  of  mind, 
do  not  accept  any  common  sense  reading,  nor  any  mean- 
ing that  appears  on  the  surface.  They  go  to  the  bottom  and 
stir  it  up  till  all  becomes  a  muddy  obscurity,  into  which 
each  one  may  project  from  his  internal  consciousness. 
Thus  Tschischwitz  —  whose  name  is  pronounced  with  a 
sneeze  —  sees  in  this  passage  a  reference  to  Laertes,  to  the 
King,  and  to  Hamlet  himself,  the  meaning  of  which  is 
this:  "Let  the  herculean  power  of  Laertes  do  what  it 
may,  and  the  cat. (the  King),  which  creeps  stealthily  in  the 
dark,  mew,  the  faithful  dog  ( Hamlet  himself )  will  have 
his  turn  at  last." 

A  few  specimens  of  German  analytical  criticism  would 
show  to  Mr.  Irving  that  he  is  like  a  hen  scratching  the 
surface  for  little  things.  Yet  we  could  give  reasons  as 
numerous  as  the  sands  on  the  shore  why  the  reading  of 
Tschischwitz  is  not  the  true  one,  and  could  show  that  while 
he  thinks  he  is  stirring  up  the  bottom  mud,  he  is  merely 
spreading  a  film  on  top;  but  such  precious  material  for 
literary  labor  must  not  be  prodigally  consumed.  Yet  we 
presume  not  to  say  what  is  the  hidden  meaning  of  this  line, 
for  through  much  examination  of  the  critical  commen- 
taries of  Shakespeare,  we  are  persuaded  that  he  *'builded 
wiser  than  he  knew,"  and  that  he  buried,  beneath  his  most 
trite  or  most  unmeaning  words,  profound  mysteries  which 
he  was  wholly  unconscious  of.  And  if  his  miraculous 
mind  could  not  perceive  them,  how  presumptuous  is  it  for 
any  mortal  to  even  try  to  reveal  them! 


THE  dog's  day.  143 

All  the  preceding  words  of  Hamlet  at  the  hnrial  of 
Ophelia  were  so  sensible,  so  proper  at  a  funeral,  so  properly 
expressive  of  the  feeling  natural  to  the  occasion,  so  tenderly 
sympathetic  toward  her  brother  and  the  other  mourners, 
so  reasonable  in  every  way,  that  we  have  sure  ground  for 
confidence  that  these  words  of  our  text  must  have  an  ap- 
propriate meaning.  To  those  that  can  discern  these  qual- 
ities in  his  preceding  remarks  there  can  can  be  no  version 
or  meaning  of  this  that  will  not  seem  rational.  But  we 
accept  the  more  exalting  idea  of  the  general  commentators 
that  this  playwright,  while  adapting  plays  to  suit  the 
theatre  goers  of  the  time,  with  frugal  mind  intent  on  put- 
ting money  in  his  purse  buried  deep  down  in  them,  and 
covered  over  with  shallow  lines,  the  richest  pearls  of 
unutterable  thought,  of  enigmatical  allegory,  of  far-fetched 
allusion,  of  complex  metaphor,  of  profound  philosophy,  of 
abstruse  learning,  of  arts  and  sciences  far  ahead  of  his 
time,_not  knowing  them  himself,  and  not  intending  them 
ever  to  be  discovered;  and,  therefore,  that  all  these  pre- 
tended discoveries  are  presumptuous  ignorance  and  im- 
pious handed  sacrilege. 


XXX. 

WAIL  FOB  A  HAT 

WE  WANTED  that  hat  because  it  was  our  hat.  The 
one  left  in  its  place  in  the  Burnet  dining  room  did 
not  fill  its  place  in  our  feelings.  To  like  our  own  better 
than  anybody  else's  is  the  law  of  nature.  This  law  will 
always  make  socialist  communities,  all  co-operative  busi- 
ness undertakings,  and  all  democratic  governments  failures; 
for  they  are  founded  on  the  theory  that  every  one  will 
care  for  the  commune  first,  and  secondly  for  himself  as 
only  a  sharer  in  the  universal  good;  that  each  will  subor- 
dinate his  own  interest  and  ambition  to  the  interest  of  the 
whole.  This  reverses  nature.  We  love  best  that  which 
is  our  own:  our  own  brothers,  sisters,  cousins  and  aunts. 
We  love  our  wife  Jerusha  and  the  nine  pledges  of  her  love, 
and  one  pledge  at  the  breast  —  a  pledge  "up  the  spout," 
to  use  a  banking  phrase  —  better  than  anybody  else's  wife 
and  nine  pledges  of  love  and  one  at  the  breast. 

This  is  intuition  in  children.  When  each  new  pledge 
of  Jerusha's  love  arrives,  the  previous  pledges  rejoice  more 
over  that,  than  over  ninety  and  nine  pledges  in  other 
households.  So  do  we.  Each  fresh  one  is  welcome, 
although  the  sensation  has  now  lost  its  novelty.  We  pre- 
ferred that  hat  to  anybody  else's.  A  conf  ormateur  had  shaped 
it  to  our  head  —  a  head  which  a  phrenologist  had  recently 
examined  and  pronounced  to  have  all  the  organs  of  great- 
ness in  any  line  of  life,  but  too  much  restrained  by  modesty. 
We  trusted  to  the  hat's  size  and  shape,  and  disdained  to  re- 
duce it  to  the  common  herd  by  putting  a  card  in  it.  The 
one  left  is  big  enough,  but  it  has  no  more  character  than 

144 


WAIL   FOR   A   HAT.  145 

if  it  had  been  shaped  on  a  bag  of  meah  He  that  wore 
it  had  no  bumps  to  speak  of;  only  an  expressionless  mass. 
Besides,  it  has  the  cottony  look  of  a  five-dollar  hat,  while 
ours  was  a  glossy  seven-dollar.  And  this  is  a  general 
utility  compromise,  while  ours  was  strictly  up  to  the  style. 
We  have  in  our  vision  the  form  of  the  man  that  wore 
this  left  hat  —  a  fat  headed,  thick  necked,  big  jowlcd, 
beefy,  corpulent,  baldhcaded  man;  a  big  eater,  his  voice 
wheezy  fi'om  fullness  of  the  stomach*;  whose  highest  ener- 
gies are  put  forth  at  the  table;  who  eats  through  the  bill 
of  fare.  We  are  having  it  out  with  him  for  that  hat. 
And  he  is  a  man  who  thinks  that  to  take  the  best  hat  or 
overcoat  at  public  places  is  a  huge  joke.  Tliis  is  his  finest 
sense  of  humor.  He  would  think  the  joke  still  finer  if  he 
could  pick  up  any  other  property  of  others  without  detec- 
tion. We  have  not  only  a  prejudice  in  favor  of  our  own 
hat,  but  against  wearing  another  man's,  particularly  the 
hat  of  a  man  of  such  character.  We  shall  buy  an  early 
spring  hat,  and  reduce  to  that  extent  our  subscription  to 
the  missionary  fund  for  sending  ruffled  shirts  to  the  bare- 
footed natives  of  Congo, 


10 


XXXI. 

MARRIAGE  AND  HIGHER  EDUCATION 
OF  WOMEN. 

DOES  THE  higher  education  of  women  make  them 
averse  to  marriage  ?  If  it  does,  ought  higher  edu- 
cation be  encouraged?  A  journal  near  the  intellectual  hub 
of  the  universe  where  the  higher  education  of  women  has 
long  been  the  fashion,  affirms,  that  it  causes  this  unnatural 
aversion.  If  so,  it  is  a  subject  for  scientific  inquiry  and 
moral  reflection.  The  first  and  superficial  suggestion  will 
be  of  incredulity  that  anything  but  experience  can  make 
women  averse  to  marriage;  but  this  is  not  the  scientific 
method,  and  it  can  not  answer  the  fact  stated  by  a  careful 
journal,  that  it  works  so.  If  the  conjecture  be  offered  that 
the  higher  education  gives  women  mental  resources,  and 
then  they  cease  to  desire  marriage,  it  has  the  reflection 
that  it  is  mental  vacancy  that  leads  the  mass  of  women  to 
marry  —  a  conclusion  so  unpleasant  that  it  can  not  be  ac- 
cepted without  positive  proof. 

To  suppose  that  it  is  because  higher  education  expands 
the  female  mind,  and  forms  reason  and  judgment  in  the 
place  of  nature  and  instinct,  and  thus  makes  them  capable 
of  drawing  deliberate  judgment  on  men,  whereby  they  fail 
to  discover  sufficient  merit  in  them  to  induce  such  a  con- 
nection, is  only  an  elaboration  of  the  previous  conjecture, 
and  is  alike  unflattering  to  the  mass  of  women  and  to  men. 
For  the  number  of  men  who  have  gone  through  the  higher 
education  is  sufficient  to  mate  the  college-bred  women. 
Besides,  this  assumes  so  much  as  to  make  it  a  travesty  on 
the  scientific  method;  it  assumes  that  the  higher  education 

146 


MARRIAGE   AND   EDUCATION   OF    WOMEN.  147 

expands  the  mind,  forms  reason  and  jndgment,  and  makes 
a  liiglier  general  caj^acity  —  tilings  which  are  far  from  being 
scientifically  established.  In  a  large  part  of  the  young  men 
it  is  observed  that  the  time  when  they  come  from  college  is 
the  green  age,  and  that  their  most  conspicuous  acquirement 
is  the  idea  that  they  are  finished ;  while  the  anxious  inquiry 
of  their  friends  is,  what  are  they  good  for? 

During  the  present  year  a  woman  sufl'rage  convention 
adopted  a  resolution  that  the  breeding  of  statesmen  can  not 
be  carried  to  a  high  point  unless  they  who  are  to  be  moth- 
ers of  statesmen  are  taught  and  practiced  in  statesmanship. 
The  resolution  seems  to  have  a  good  foundation,  both  in 
the  rules  applied  by  scientific  breeders  of  domestic  animals,  v. 

and  in  the  common  tradition  that  sons  get  their  intellect- 
ual brightness  from  the  mother.  But  if  it  be  true  that 
higher  education  makes  women  averse  to  marriage,  then  this 
fitting  of  women  for  statesmanship,  like  all  other  plans  for 
perfecting,  society,  would  culminate  in  the  extinction  of  the 
human  race. 

This,  however,  is  no  hindrance  to  the  true  philosopher. 
The  distinguished  Anacharsis  Cloots,  surnamed  the.  Friend 
to  Humanity,  said  that  the  principles  of  the  Constitution, 
adopted  by  the  National  Assembly  of  France,  would  be 
cheaply  purchased  at  the  sacrifice  of  the  whole  human  race. 

One  of  the  most  puzzling  things  to  the  philosopher  is 
the  multiplication  of  the  species  —  that  peo^jlewho  affirm 
that  all  is  going  to  the  bad,  and  that  life  is  not  worth  liv- 
ing, should  make  the  chief  business  of  their  lives  to  prop- 
agate their  kind  to  the  same  fate,  with  the  large  chance 
of  going  to  the  worse.  Is  this  alleged  aversion  because  this 
college  education  for  women,  this  eating  of  the  tree  of 
knowledge,  opens  their  eyes  to  the  vanity  of  all  things,  and 
makes  them  reluctant  to  bring  others  into  the  world  to  the 
same  experience,  and  thus  makes  them  averse  to  marriage? 


148  MARRIAGE   AND   EDUCATION"  OF  WOMEN. 

This  idea  may  find  some  support  in  the  common  observation 
that  the  expansion  of  tlie  female  mind  by  the  suffrage  move- 
ment makes  them  more  discontented  with  their  sex.  One 
of  the  most  eloquent  and  fortunate  of  the  suffrage  apostles 
said  that  when  she  became  a  mother,  and  the  attending 
priestesses  told  her  it  was  a  girl,  she  turned  her  face  to  the 
wall  and  wept. 

If  the  expansion  of  the  female  mind  effectuates  aversion 
to  maternity  and  marriage,  the  theory  of  propagating  a  more 
intellectual  race  by  higher  education  of  the  mothers  seems 
to  fail.  Some  may  see  in  it  a  compensation  in  the  increased 
chances  of  marriage  which  will  be  given  to  the  mass  by 
taking  the  college-bred  girls  out  of  the  field.  But  may  not 
this  lead  to  the  classification  of  the  married  women  as  the 
uneducated  part  of  the  female  race,  and  thus  result  in  de- 
grading marriage  of  women  by  associating  it  with  ignorance? 
Then  female  society  would  be  divided  by  a  class  of  spinsters 
of  higher  education  and  superior  minds,  devoted  to  their 
own  intellectual  elevation,  and  to  the  ]3ursuit  of  the  good, 
the  beautiful,  and  the  true,  and  a  much  larger  class  of 
married  women,  good  enough  for  domestic  uses. 

They  who  hold  that  creation  iinderstood  itself  when  it 
made  the  human  race  male  and  female,  and  that  it  made  no 
mistake  and  did  not  mean  them  to  be  alike,  or  to  have  the 
same  sphere,  have  argued  that  the  office  of  maternity  is  a 
very  high  one,  and  that  it  is  very  absorbing  to  woman's 
powers,  and  that  creation  meant  that  her  vital  forces  should 
be  reserved  for  this  great  function,  and  that  the  diverting 
of  her  energies  to  hard  mental  application  during  those 
years  in  which  her  bodily  powers  are  maturing  diminishes 
her  ability  for  healthy  maternity.  If  this  be  true,  then  the 
inability  to  properly  discharge  her  great  function  to  ma- 
ternity may  bring  disinclination  to  marriage.  But,  as  was 
before  remarked,  no  consequences  to  the  human  race  should 


MARRIAGE  AKD  EDUCATION   OF  WOMEIT.  149 

be  allowed  to  stand  in  the  way  of  plans  for  perfecting  human 
society;  and  there  are  signs  that  the  advanced  women  will 
revolt  against  the  office  of  maternity,  as  imposing  on  them 
a  disability  which  is  incompatible  with  equal  civil  and 
political  rights. 


XXXII. 

THE  DELUGE  OF  1883. 

THE  flood  in  the  rivers  is  a  serious  reminder  of  the 
flood  of  some  thousands  or  millions  of  years  ago.  As 
that  was  sent  because  the  world  had  become  wicked,  people 
should  reflect  on  their  sins,  and  should  think  whether  the 
water-cure  is  not  now  alike  called  for.  They  should  also 
select  the  truly  good  man  to  be  saved  to  re-people  the  earth 
and  rehabilitate  the  vine.  If  the  newspapers  may  be  taken 
as  evidence,  men  are  as  bad  now  as  when  there  was  no  way 
to  cure  their  wickedness  save  to  drown  them  as  boys  do 
blind  kittens.  The  deluge  is  the  only  adequate  moral 
reform.  What  more  fit  extinguisher  for  the  manufacture 
and  sale  of  intoxicating  drinks  than  to  drown  it  out?  By 
actual  figures,  which  can  not  lie,  it  is  found  that  ninety- 
five  per  cent,  of  all  the  offenses  against  morals,  persons, 
property,  the  public  peace  and  decency,  are  caused  by  this 
trade.  Drown  it  out,  and  but  five  per  cent,  would  re- 
main— a  proportion  so  minute  that  society  could  easily 
crush  the  remnant,  and  be  perfectly  good. 

As  the  occupation  of  courts  and  police  would  then  be 
gone,  no  harm  could  come  from  drowning  these  also.  The 
deluge  is  the  Creator's  cure  for  a  wicked  world,  and  may 
always  be  expected  wheo  the  world  is  very  wicked,  as 
obviously  it  is  now.  Thomas  Jefferson,  who  was  a  true 
reformer,  said  in  a  letter  to  Minister  Short,  justifying  the 
free  blood-letting  in  the  massacres  and  guillotine  executions 
of  the  French  Revolution,  that  if  every  nation  were  killed 
off  to  a  single  pair,  so  as  to  start  anew,  the  earth  would  be 
the  better  for  it.     He  would  have  a  deluge  in  hand;  to  be 

J50 


THE   DELUGE   OF   1883.  151 

launched  often,  and  a  very  little  ark  for  the  human  pas- 
sengers. Any  truly  good  man  who  devotes  mind  and 
occujiation  to  censorshiji  of  the  wickedness  of  society,  can 
describe  a  great  many  whose  drowning  would  be  the  best 
use  they  could  be  put  to.  If  each  were  enabled  to  number 
and  designate,  perhaps  as  few  would  be  left  as  in  Jefferson's 
jierfected  philanthropy. 

Next  to  the  makers  and  sellers  of  intoxicating  drinks, 
in  point  of  wickedness,  as  classified  by  the  good,  come  the 
gamblers — strictly  drawing  the  line  between  those  respect- 
able gamblers,  who  wager  on  ideal  stocks  and  ideal  produce, 
and  those  who  deal  in  disreputable  cards  and  dice.  With 
a  dam  to  keep  the  flood  from  the  respectable,  all  will  con- 
sent that  the  waters  shall  drown  the  remainder.  Next  to 
these  in  the  order  of  iniquity  come  the  houses  of  the  Corin- 
th ian  nymphs.  Let  these  be  given  up  to  the  flood,  while 
well-pitched  arks  save  the  men  who  frequent  them.  Thus 
shall  society  be  purified.  Then  come  the  Sunday  shows, 
and  indeed  the  theatres  in  general;  for  the  idea  of  the 
wickedness  of  the  theatre  all  through  is  the  chief  of  the 
Sunday  wickedness. 

A  reading  of  the  organs  of  intelligence  carries  the  con- 
viction that  the  City  Council  and  Board  of  Education  are 
corrupt;  that  the  Board  of  Health  is  unhealthy;  the  city 
executive  and  administrative  offices  given  up  to  peculation; 
the  Court-house  filled  with  rings;  the  county  administration 
a  thing  of  private  profit;  the  city  and  county  administrative 
boards  and  officers  generally  incomjjetent.  "What  a  benefi- 
cence would  a  deluge  be  in  all  this !  As  to  the  news- 
papers those  great  moral  reformers  —  each  will  testify  that 
drowning  would  be  a  good  thing  for  the  others.  Thus 
their  vote  for  a  deluge  would  be  unanimous.  The  general 
acclaim  is  that  society  in  general,  and  fashionable  society 
in  particular,  is  morally  corrupt.     As  to  the  political  par- 


152  THE    DELUGE    OF    1883. 

ties,  each  would  agree  that  the  world  would  be  better  for 
the  drowning  of  the  other. 

A  collocation  of  the  testimony  of  each  would  make  the 
voices  nearly  unanimous  for  a  deluge.  Suppose  that  by 
a  liberal  arrangement,  the  churches  Avere  kept  dry;  still, 
the  great  majority  would  be  reformed.  Thus  the  more  we 
reflect  on  the  flood  as  a  moral  reformer,  the  more  do  we 
perceive  that  it  is  needed  periodically,  and  needed  noAv, 
and  that  it  is  the  only  adequate  means  that  history  tells  of 
for  curing  the  world  of  wickedness. 

In  thinking  of  the  deluge  the  mind  conceives  boundless 
waters,  with  the  ark,  little  speck,  drifting  on  the  wild 
waste.  It  does  not  think  of  it  as  the  gradual  rise  of  the 
rivers,  making  just  such  scenes  as  the  dwellers  in  this  city 
are  passing  through.  What  if  they  were  not  passing 
through!  What  if  the  waters  were  to  keep  on  rising  as 
before!  How  sincerely  penitent  would  men  be,  with  one 
eye  aloft  and  the  other  on  the  river  reports. 

The  future  scientist  from  Timbuctoo,  tracing  the  his- 
tory of  the  extinct  inhabitants  of  Cincinnati  in  the  ruins 
buried  under  the  growth  of  centuries,  would  write  out  the 
story  of  the  deluge  of  1883.  At  first  the  inhabitants  wel- 
comed the  rise  of  the  Ohio  as  a  promise  of  coal  and  naviga- 
tion. As  it  kejit  on  they  thought  it  a  sensation,  and 
began  to  plume  themselves  on  the  prospect  of  as  high 
water  as  the  flood  of  1847,  and  even  of  1832.  They  Joked 
on  the  calamity  of  the  poor  people  who  were  driven  from 
habitations  near  the  river,  and  on  the  hurry  of  merchants 
in  lifting  heavy  goods  out  of  their  cellars  in  ''the  bottom. '' 
It  kept  on,  and  merchants  had  to  move  again,  and  were 
driven  out  of  the  first  story,  and  a  multitude  of  poor  peo- 
ple were  homeless,  leaving  their  all  in  the  rising  waters. 

Then  the  gas-works  were  submerged,  and  the  city  left 
in  darkness;  then  the  water-works,  leaving  the  great  city 


THE   DELUGE   OF    1883.  l53 

without  water  in  a  flood.  The  coal-yards  were  in  the 
midst  of  a  sea.  The  raih'oad  stations  and  tracks  were 
drowned.  The  whole  people  began  to  realize  that  a  great 
calamity  was  upon  them.  Yet  they  thought  that  when  the 
flood  had  reached  the  height  of  1832  it  would  be'satisfied, 
and  recede;  but  it  kept  on.  Communication  with  the 
country  was  cut  off,  and  the  flood  was  the  same  in  the 
country.  A  famine  for  food  came  on  top  of  a  light  famine, 
a  fuel  famine,  a  water  famine,  and  with  inhabitants 
driven  from  their  houses  by  the  continually  advancing 
waters.  Churches  and  all  public  buildings  were  crowded, 
and  every  house  that  was  still  above  the  water  was  invaded 
by  all  it  could  hold,  until  these  in  turn  had  to  fly  to  higher 
ground. 

The  mind  can  not  conceive  the  anguish  and  terror  of 
this,  when  the  population  of  a  great  city  was  all  in  the 
same  terror  and  suffering.  It  was  a  pandemonium  of  hun- 
ger, cold  and  desperation.  Many  in  their  despair  refused 
to  leave  their  dwellings,  and  these  were  found,  centuries 
after,  by  the  excavations  of  discoverers,  man  and  wife,  par- 
ents and  children,  lover  and  maiden,  mother  and  the  babe 
at  her  breast,  in  mutual  embrace,  buried  in  the  yellow 
earth  brought  down  by  the  river  flood.  The  semi-circle  of 
hills  was  crowded  with  hundreds  of  thousands  of  shelter- 
less, starving  people,  fast  dying  of  want,  exposure,  terror 
and  despair.  Since  the  flood  must  be,  it  was  merciful  that 
its  rise  was  at  an  accelerating  rate.  It  surrounded  the 
hills,  and  climbed  on  over  the  highest  parts,  until  at  last 
only  one  spot,  a  narrow  knoll,  stood  above  the  dreadful 
wilderness  of  waters. 

Here,  upon  a  pile  of  stones  which  he  had  heaped,  sat 
the  last  survivor  of  the  inhabitants  of  Cincinnati.  Even 
his  portrait,  in  a  painting  of  the  scene,  Avas  found, 
strangely  preserved.     The  name  of  the  artist  inscribed 


154  THE    DELUGE    OF    1883. 

thereon  is  Beard,  who  must  have  been  a  great  master,  for 
the  picture  is  very  expressive.  The  last  man's  wife  has  died 
of  want  and  terror  in  his  arms,  and  now  lies  floating  on  the 
rising  waters  by  the  rock.  He  sits  on  the  rock,  almost  desti- 
tute of  apparel,  contemplating  the  dreadful  waters  willi 
countenance  of  suffering,  hopeless  despair,  plucky  deter- 
mination and  defiance,  which  tell  the  story  of  the  dreadful 
tragedy,  and  express  an  heroic  soul  that  feels  as  a  man,  and, 
as  a  man  that  has  suffered  the  worst,  defies  all  that  can  yet 
come  to  him. 

A  23icture  of  all  the  calamities  of  the  deluge  is  concen- 
trated in  this  single  figure.  An  idea  is  entertained  by 
many  that  creation  is  ever  repeating  itself  in  great  cycles; 
that  what  now  is  has  been  thousands  of  years  before,  and 
will  be  again.  If  this  brief  narrative  is  not  the  history  of 
the  deluge  of  1883,  it  is  of  the  former  deluge,  and  of  that 
which  will  be.  And  as  the  deluge  is  a  moral  suasion,  to  be 
sent  at  times  when  the  wickedness  of  the  world  has  over- 
come all  the  ordinary  instrumentalities,  an  extraordinary 
rise  in  the  rivers  is  to  every  one  a  loud  call  for  moral  intro- 
spection. 


XXXIII. 
IS  WOMAN  A  LIVING  LIE? 

EVERY  inexperienced  woman  who  takes  getting  married 
in  the  natural  way,  marries  a  being  created  by  her 
own  fancy  from  all  sorts  of  kaleidoscopic  materials — from 
the  romances  she  has  read,  and  the  idolization  of  her  own 
rapturous  conceptions.  In  due  time  she  finds  him  a 
commonplace  being,  made  up  chiefly  of  petty  animal  wants; 
narrow-minded,  occupied  in  small  pursuits,  much  given  to 
the  little  things  of  his  own  comfort,  and  easily  losing  his 
temper  at  any  privation  of  them,  and  altogether  a  common 
clod  compared  to  the  spiritual  being  which  her  enchanted 
fancy  created.  Wh^t  does  a  good  woman  do?  She  accepts 
the  situation,  makes  a  duty  of  that  which  she  expected  to 
be  a  delight,  and  keeps  up  the  same  manner  of  love  and 
worship,  as  if  he  were  still  the  sovereign  of  her  bosom,  and 
all  her  fancy  had  painted  him. 

Some  one  of  those  useless  literary  men  who  practice 
the  setting  of  logical  traps  for  women,  has  alleged  that 
this  makes  her  life  a  living  lie.  The  paradox  is  here  pre- 
sented that  her  life  of  fidelity  and  self-sacrifice  makes  her 
a  living  lie.  The  assertion  is  boldly  made  as  the  conclusion 
of  inflexible  logic  that  ''she  owes  to  this  very  fact  of  being 
a  persistent  liar  that  she  is  a  faithful  and  devoted  wife." 
The  logic  goes  on  to  argue  that  this  practice  of  untruth 
''re-acts  upon  her  moral  character,"  and  that  "gradually 
she  becomes  absolutely  incapable  of  rigid  adherence  to  truth 
in  matters  in  which  truth  is  really  of  some  importance." 

Logic  can  not  stop  for  consequences.  Yet  a  conclusion 
60  startling  as  that  the  fidelity  of  the  wife  makes  her  life  a" 

155 


156  IS  WOMAN  A  LIVING  LIE? 

falsehood,  should  cause  a  critical  examination  of  the  logical 
process.  The  alternative  end  of  this  logic,  which  would 
have  it  that  the  truthful  wife  must  be  false  to  wedlocR,  and 
must  break  the  lock  because  the  man  is  not  the  him  that 
her  fancy  painted,  is  enough  to  raise  a  doubt  of  its  exact- 
ness. The  critical  doubt  seizes  at  once  upon  the  peg  that 
he  lies  at  the  base  of  the  whole  structure  of  deception;  that 
he  is  not  what  he  seemed;  that  he  came  in  by  deceit,  and 
thereby  made  his  own  life  a  lie,  and  imposed  upon  her 
whatever  of  falsehood  is  in  her  life.  Even  if  this  does  let 
her  out  entirely,  it  gives  her  the  satisfactory  argument  of 
"  You're  another." 

But  woman  has  not  to  rest  her  vindication  on  recrim- 
ination, however  handy  that  may  be  to  have  in  the  house. 
She  can  prove  that  a  finer  drawing  of  logic  would  make 
this  fidelity  of  wifely  conduct  under  such  disillusion  the 
highest  truthfulness,  and  that  instead  of  demoralizing  her 
whole  nature,  it  makes  her  more  angelic. 

Oberon  drops  upon  all  true  brides  the  enchanting  juice 
of  the  flower,  ''  Love  in  Idleness,"  by  which  he  caused 
the  fair  Titania  to  be  enamoured  of  the  transformed 
Bottom.  Marriage  dispels  the  enchantment,  and  she  comes 
gradually  and  against  her  resisting  will  to  the  knowledge 
that  he  is  a  dull  person;  that  all  the  bright  things  he  ever 
said  were  stock  pieces;  that  he  has  a  little  stock  of  little 
ideas  which  she  has  come  to  know  by  rote,  and  that  he  has 
no  desire  to  add  to  them,  and  no  soul  higher  than  his 
body. 

When  she  finds  the  creation  of  her  fancy  disenchanted, 
and  nothing  but  a  commonplace  and  even  a  vulgar  man, 
she  meekly  holds  no  one  but  herself  to  blame  for  her  delu- 
sion. This  is  the  meekness  of  woman's  nature.  She  real- 
izes how  lunatic  her  fancy  was,  and  that  it  was  all  her  own. 
She  even  accuses  herself  of  having  deceived  him  by  her 
fancy's  transformation  of  him,  and  by  her  adoration  of  tho 


IS  WOMAN   A  LIVING   LIE?  157 

creation  of  her  own  fancy,  wliicli  drew  him  into  a  marriage 
that  is  mentally  incompatible.  The  consciousness  of  this 
gives  her  meekness,  and  makes  her  accept  all  the  wifely 
part  as  the  path  of  duty,  and  to  walk  in  it  patiently.  She 
feels  that  she  ought  to  feel  for  him  that  love  which  once 
pervaded  her  whole  being,  and  that  it  is  her  own  fault  that 
she  does  not.  Iler  conscience  is  smitten  that  she  ever 
allowed  him  to  believe  he  had  possessed  her  soul,  and  this 
^akes  her  tender  and  true  to  him  when  all  the  halo  with 
which  her  imagination  once  enveloped  him  is  dissipated 
and  all  the  glow  of  her  feelings  is  cooled  down. 

This,  instead  of  living  a  lie,  is  the  devotion  of  her  life 
to  the  faithful  performance  of  that  which  she  has  under- 
taken, and  to  keeping  the  truth  of  her  professions.  It  is 
the  keeping  of  her  contract  sacred  to  the  utmost  of  her 
ability.  It  is  a  life  of  self-sacrifice  to  truth.  Instead  of 
reacting  upon  woman's  moral  nature,  and  making  her 
incapable  of  truth  in  all  things,  this  chastened  life,  this 
constant  bearing  of  the  cross,  and  this  meek  thought  that 
she  alone  is  to  blame  for  the  conjugal  yoking  of  intellect- 
ual and  spiritual  opposites,  naturally  and  logically  brings 
to  women  a  finer  tenderness  and  truthfulness.  It  makes 
'them  more  considerate  and  submissive  wives,  having  always 
toward  the  husband  some  feeling  of  remorse  for  having 
deceived  him.  It  makes  them  more  devoted  to  their  chil 
dren,  lavishing  upon  them  the  wellspring  of  love  which  had 
ceased  to  gush  to  the  man.  It  makes  them  more  spiritual 
minded,  more  given  to  seek  the  consolations  of  religion, 
more  charitable  toward  their  neighbors,  more  unselfish  in 
all  things.  Indeed,  so  paramount  and  all-pervading  is  the 
influence  of  this  delusion  of  love  and  disillusion  of  mar- 
riage on  the  character  of  woman,  that  we  are  not  capable 
of  judging  what  she  would  be  without  the  experience  of 
this  paradise,  and  of  this  fall,  which  comes  to  every  woman 
who  marries  in  the  natural  way. 


XXXIY. 
EQUAL  RIGHTS  OF  THE  CHILD. 

THE  claim  of  woman's  equal  rights  was  hardly  heard 
of  till  the  present  century.  If  the  earth  is  only  five 
thousand  or  fifty  million  years  old,  this  is  great  encourage-, 
ment  to'the  women  advocates  to  persevere.  In  fact,  the 
claim  of  women's  rights  in  this  country  has  sprung  chiefly 
from  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  The  declaration 
that  all  men  are  created  equal  —  improved  in  the  common 
speech  to  "^free  and  equal"  —  was  a  potent  weapon  in  the 
hands  of  the  anti-slavery  people;  it  is  now  a  powerful 
argument  in  the  mouths  of  the  women  of  the  platform. 
That  it  will  ultimately  break  down  man's  oligarchy,  as  it 
broke  down  slavery,  can  not  be  doubted  by  any  who  have 
faith  in  the  prevailing  power  of  truth. 

The  term  man  in  the  Declaration  means  mankind, 
which  embraces  womankind.  The  equality  which  is  de- 
clared is  not  a  quality  which  the  person  grows  into  at  some 
lawful  age  arbitrarily  fixed  by  others,  but  is  a  state  into 
which  the  child  is  born.  Every  female  orator  goes  armed 
with  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  as  Corwin,  in  the 
greatest  speech  of  his  time,  said  our  troops  invaded  Mex- 
ico, carrying  habeas  corpus  and  trial  by  jury  at  the  cannon's 
mouth.  Before  this  declaration  of  equal  rights  man  stands 
confounded.  The  logic  of  the  rights  of  man  carries 
the  rights  of  woman,  and  the  same  reasoning  carried  for- 
ward makes  undeniable  the  equal  rights  of  the  child. 

Recent  sensational  events.  West  and  East,  in  which 
boys  have  shot  their  fathers,  and  girls  have  poisoned  them, 
because  they  chastised  them  by  whipping,  have  brought 

158 


EQUAL   RIGHTS  OF  THE  CHILD.  159 

the  question  of  cliildren's  rights  to  the  front.  In  a  case 
in  Missouri  the  boy  boldly  asserted  that  his  father  had  no 
right  to  whip  him,  and  that  h*e  had  defended  his  own 
rights  by  shooting  him.  This  shocks  ancient  prejudice, 
but  so  does  the  claim  of  woman's  equal  rights.  ^\iiy  not 
ancient  ideas  be  as  much  at  fault  in  this  as  in  regard  to  the 
equality  of  woman? 

Herein  have  children  struck  that  blow  which  the  maxim 
of  liberty  requires  of  all  who  would  be  free.  If  woman 
should  strike  the  blow,  she  would  make  man  respect  her 
cause  through  his  fears.  If  they  should  declare  a  separa- 
tion, holding  men  as  enemies  in  war,  until  peace  should  be 
arranged  on  honorable  terms,  they  would  soon  fetch  men 
to  their  senses.  But  to  proclaim  independence  and  equal- 
ity while  seeking  man's  yoke  as  woman's  proudest  destiny, 
and  making  his  protection,  and  what  they  call  his  love, 
essential  to  her  existence,  is  to  rant  in  words  of  freedom 
while  hugging  the  chains  of  bondage. 

The  logic  of  woman's  right  to  the  elective  franchise  is 
irrefragable.  First,  all  persons  are  by  birth  equal.  Second, 
the  Fifteenth  Amendment  declares  that  "All  persons  born 
or  naturalized  in  the  United  States,  and  subject  to  the 
jurisdiction  thereof,  are  citizens  of  the  United  States  and 
of  the  State  wherein  they  reside."  Thus  men,  women  and 
infants  are  constitutional  citizens.  They  then  go  back  to 
the  Dred  Scott  decisioii,  which  declared  that  the  term  citi- 
zen was  limited  to  those  possessed  of  the  elective  franchise. 
By  this  they  prove  that  women,  being  now  constitutional 
citizens,  have  the  right  to  vote. 

This  was  the  lawyer  process  by  which  Benjamin  F.  But- 
ler asserted  that  women  are  now  voters  de  j'lcre,  whereby 
that  gay  deceiver  captivated  the  credulous  suffragists  of 
Massachusetts.  The  acute  logical  quality  of  the  female 
mind,  which  instinctively  goes  straight  to  the  desired  end. 


160  EQUAL   RIGHTS  OF  THE  CHILD. 

takes  a  firm  grip  on  this  law  process,  which  adds  the  defini- 
tion of  citizen,  in  an  overruled  judicial  decision,  to  the 
Article  of  the  Constitution  which  overruled  it.  Upon  this 
firm  foundation  of  logic  and  law  do  the  woman  suffragists 
plant  their  rights,  surely  believing  that  it  makes  them 
voters  dejure,  and  than  they  are  kept  out  of  their  rights  by 
brute  force.  They  who  are  fit  to  be  free,  themselves  will 
strike  the  blow. 

The  same  law  process  enfranchises  every  person  born  in 
the  jurisdiction,  or  naturalized  —  man,  woman  and  child. 
This  may  startle  old  prejudices;  so  does  the  enfranchise- 
ment of  women;  but  the  argument  is  the  same,  and  the 
argument  against  is  alike  untenable.  Logic  does  not  quail 
at  results.  It  will  be  said,  that  the  child  is  dependent  on 
parents,  and  therefore  is  not  a  free  elector;  so  it  is  said  that 
the  wife  is  dependent  on  the  man,  and  will  have  to  vote  as 
he  does.  But  this  does  not  silence  woman.  All  voters  are 
led  in  some  way  —  by  their  party,  their  newspaper,  their 
friends,  and  so  on.  What  influence  more  wholesome  than 
that  of  man  on  the  voting  wife,  and  of  parents  directing 
the  voting  infant? 

The  ancient  notion  that  children  are  under  obligations 
to  parents  for  bringing  them  into  the  world,  and,  therefore, 
have  no  right  to  freedom  until  they  have  reached  a  certain 
age,  arbitrarily  fixed  by  the  parents,  has  no  place  under  the 
Declaration  that  all  men  are  created  equal.  They  are  not 
created  men,  in  the  sense  of  being  full-grown,  but  are 
created  equal, in  that  they  are  born  equal.  Nor  will  the  claim 
of  parents  that  the  child  is  under  obligation  to  them  for 
fetching  him  into  the  world,  or  for  protecting,  supporting 
and  rearing  him,  bear  rational  investigation. 

The  foundation  principle  that  underlies  the  bottom  of 
our  institutions  is  that  they  are  founded  on  the  consent  of 
the  governed.     In  flagrant  violation  of  this  principle  the 


EQUAL  RIGHTS  OF  THE  CHILD.  161 

child  is  brought  into  this  world  without  his  consent.  lie 
has  never  been  heard  in  court  on  tliis  claim  of  parents.  He 
may  demand  whether  they  brought  him  into  the  world  for 
his  good,  01*  for  their  own  glory;  whether  they  did  not 
force  him  into  a  hard  destiny  in  this  world,  and  into  fear- 
ful chances  in  the  next,  in  utter  tlioughtlessnessfor  his  fate. 
The  argument  would  surely  go  against  thera.  A  just  court 
would  have  to  decide  that  instead  of  his  owing  duty  to 
them,  they  owe  him  the  service  and  earnings  of  their  lives 
for  the  life  which  they  recklessly  forced  upon  him. 

Therefore  the  growing  practice  of  the  sons  and  daugh- 
ters of  this  fashionable  generation  to  begin  in  early  years 
to  reckon  how  the  parents  will  cut  up,  is  in  line  with  their 
just  right  to  get  even  with  them  for  imposing  on  them, 
without  their  consent,  the  dreadful  fact  of  existence.  Thus 
must  all  notions  of  the  obligations  of  children  to  parents 
be  eliminated  from  the  question  of  their  equal  rights,  as  in 
all  subjection  of  the  wife  to  the  man  from  her  right  to  vote. 
All  persons  are  in  some  way  directed  how  to  vote.  What 
voters  can  be  better  guided  for  the  State  than  children  by 
parents  Avho  owe  them  the  duty  to  train  them  up  in  the 
way  they  should  go?  Shall  not  our  elections  be  wrapped 
in  associations  which  appeal  to  all  the  softer  parts  of  human 
nature,  when  the  mother,  herself  a  voter,  guides  the  tiny 
hand  of  the  babe  at  her  breast,  as  she  lovingly  loosens  its 
instinctive  clutch,  to  jilace  in  the  box — 

"  A  weapon  that  comes  down  as  still 
As  snowflakcs  fall  upon  the  sod, 
But  executes  a  freeman's  will. 
As  lightning  does  the  will  of  God?" 


11 


XXXY. 

WAS  THE  CREATION  A  FAILURE  ? 

THERE  is  on  record  the  testimony  of  very  high 
autliority  that  the  work  of  creation  was  well  done. 
But  that  was  long  ago.  Not  a  few  very  good  people  think 
they  magnify  their  own  goodness  by  calling  the  world  very 
bad.  They  honor  the  Creator  by  making  creation  a  failure. 
They  lose  their  brains  in  wandering  mazes  in  the  inquiry 
into  the  origin  of  evil,  to  account  for  creation's  going  back 
on  the  Creator.  The  origin  of  good  seems  easy,  but  tne 
origin  of  evil  is  a  puzzle.  How  good  can  be  without  evil 
is  further  along  than  they  have  got. 

Thus  do  many  good  people  make  the  work  of  creation 
such  a  failure  that  they  allege  that  there  must  be  another 
creation  which  is  good  enough  to  make  things  even.  Their 
wonderful  logic  reasons  from  the  superlative  badness  of  the 
known  to  the  superlative  goodness  of  the  unknown.  They 
exalt  the  Creator's  unknown  work  by  making  the  worst  of 
the  known  creation.  Thus  they  make  pessimism  in  the 
reality  ground  for  optimism  in  the  unseen;  the  condem- 
nation of  everything  here  as  wrong  the  reason  for  the  con- 
clusion that  everything  is  right  elsewhere. 

If  they  should  put  their  minds  to  conceiving  a  world 
which  was  good,  they  might  discover  that  creation  is  a 
work  which  needs  a  master  hand.  Each  one  can  imagine 
for  himself  what  he  thinks  betterment;  but  reflection 
would  show  that  it  is  selfish,  and  would  not  be  betterment 
to  all.  The  fancy  generally  takes  the  shajie  of  riches 
enough  to  supply  all  wants  of  ease  and  luxury.  But  riches 
can  not  command  ease  and  luxury  nor  comfort  unless  they 
command  the  labor  of  other  persons.     To  make  a  few  rich 

162 


WAS  THE  CREATION   A    FAILURE?  1C3 

would  not  better  the  creation.  Universal  riches  would  be 
the  same  as  universal  poverty,  and  each  one  would  have  to 
scratch  for  his  living. 

Can  the  mind  conceive  a  world  without  #vil,  which 
would  not  be  a  world  without  good?  Can  it  conceive  vir- 
tue without  vice?  A  world  in  which  it  would  be  impossi- 
ble to  sin,  would  make  its  inhabitants  no  better  than 
sticks  and  stones,  or  than  those  we  call  brute  beasts.  A 
world  in  which  sin  brought  no  penalty,  would  be  utter 
debasement.  By  sin  is  meant  any  violation  of  pliysiologi- 
cal  laws  —  any  transgression  of  the  laws  of  our  well-being. 
If  they  could  sin  without  consequences,  correct  living 
would  be  no  elevation,  and  virtue  and  vice  would  be  on  a 
level.  The  principle  of  debasement  is,  also,  the  principle 
of  elevation.     One  can  not  be  without  the  other. 

The  moral  law  —  which  is  the  same  as  to  say  tlie  physi- 
ological law  —  makes  sin  lasting  in  consequences.  Men 
may  think  to  sponge  tlie  score  by  what  they  call  repent- 
ance, but  they  do  not  obliterate  the  consequences.  These 
remain  in  the  world;  they  stick  to  their  own  natures. 
They  are  transmitted  to  posterity.  Necessarily  the  sins  of 
the  parents  are  visited  upon  the  children.  If  men  might 
debase  themselves  with  no  evil  consequences  to  offspring,  ■ 
the  physiological  living  of  parents  would  be  no  improve- 
ment of  offspring.  Thus,  virtue  and  vice,  good  living  and 
bad  living,  would  all  be  on  a  level,  and  the  attempt  to  create 
a  good  world  by  having  no  evil  consequences  to  sin,  would 
come  out  at  a  world  without  moral  law. 

The  consequences  of  sin  in  all  their  ramifications  in 
this  and  succeeding  generations,  are  the  causes  of  correct 
living.  They  are  all  the  working  of  the  benevolent  law  by 
which  the  fittest  survive  and  the  unfittest  perish;  by  which 
correct  living  is  elevation  and  unphysiological  living  is 
degradation.  Any  other  law  would  be  moral  chaos,  uni- 
versal degradation,  and  final  extinction.    In  fact,  under  any 


164  WAS  THE   CREATION^   A   FAILURE? 

other  law  existence  could  not  begin.  They  who  are  search- 
ing for  the  origin  of  evil  may  find  it  in  the  origin  of  good. 

Men  fancy  existence  in  a  climate  always  soft,  in  which 
nature's  b^som  supplies  food  without  being  harried  by 
labor;  but  in  such  circumstances  man  sinks  to  an  indolent, 
stupid  beast.  The  toilers  fancy  a  life  without  work,  but 
man  would  lose  mental  energy,  and  would  sink  to  degrada- 
tion. They  fancy  that  things  could  be  improved  by 
abolishing  the  rigor  of  winter;  but  the  contention  with 
nature's  rougher  conditions  produces  the  highest  physical 
and  mental  energies  of  the  human  race,  and  the  changing 
seasons  make  each  a  delight,  whereas  a  constant  sunny 
climate  would  be  depressing  monotony. 

Each  one  may  think  he  could  create  a  world  which  would 
be  better  for  himself;  but  if  he  puts  his  mind  to  conceiving 
one  which  would  be  better  for  all,  he  would  gain  more 
resj)ect  for  the  creation  as  it  stands.  The  unthinking 
think  that  death  is  an  evil.  It  may  be  to  the  individual. 
It  is  fortunate  that  he  has  not  the  choice.  As  evil  is  req- 
uisite to  good,  so  death  is  requisite  to  life.  If  men  did 
not  die,  men  could  not  be  born.  "Without  the  passing 
away  and  the  ever  renewal  of  life,  the  world  would  bo  like  a 
living  thing  chained  to  a  corpse. 

If  Eve  fetched  in  death,  as  many  do  foolishly  accuse 
her,  she  is  our  blessed  mother;  as  blessed  in  this  way  of 
making  room  for  the  race  as  in  beginning  it.  One  was 
nccessai-y  to  the  other,  and  one  was  as  great  an  invention 
as  the  other.  In  the  exercise  of  the  inalienable  right  to 
pursue  happiness,  men  may  enjoy  the  idea  that  all  that  is 
is  wrong:  may  think  pessimism  piety;  may  wonder  how  a 
good  Creator  could  let  evil  slip  in  and  spoil  the  work. 
But  if  they  keep  on  searching  they  may  find  the  origin  of 
evil  in  the  origin  of  good,  and  may  possibly  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  when  the  work  of  creation  was  pronounced 
good,  it  was  by  One  who  knew. 


XXXVI. 

SACRILEGIOUS  PLAYS. 

THE  Mayor  of  New  York  refused  a  license  to  a  trans- 
formed church  in  which  the  "  Passion  Play  "  was  to  be 
performed.  Public  sentiment  required  it.  The  line 
against  plays  which  touch  sacred  things  sliould  be  drawn 
somewhere,  and  for  the  present  it  is  drawn,  by  common 
consent,  at  the  ''Passion  Play"— a  play  which  makes  the 
crucifixion  a  dramatic  spectacle.  People  go  on  pilgrimages 
to  see  it  at  Oberammergau,  and  describe  its  effect  on  them 
as  deeply  religious;  but  this  is  different  from  fetching  the 
play  to  our  country,  and  into  audiences  which  would  be  as 
promiscuous  as  in  the  usual  theatres. 

The  "Passion  Play "  is  a  relic  of  the  miracle  plays  of 
the  olden  time,  which  were  performed  in  the  churches,  in 
which  God  and  the  other  divine  persons  were  personagi  s 
of  the  drama,  and  in  which  miracles  were  rendered  by 
stage  machinery,  very  much  as  Wagner  does  now.  The 
elder  Disraeli,  in  his  ''Curiosities  of  Literature,"  gives 
some  curious  records  of  accounts  kept  of  the  payments  for 
the  various  theatrical  properties  for  the  divine  drami(h's 
jjcrsonce.  An  incident  is  told  that  an  actor  who  personated 
God  narrowly  escaped  being  smothered  by  a  brass  head- 
piece and  visor,  which  he  wore  to  make  his  face  to  shine. 
The  common  people  were  more  reverential  to  sacred  things 
than  those  in  our  day,  and  they  saw  nothing  sacrilegious 
in  these  plays. 

The  drama  grew  away  from  Church  uses,  and  left 
sacred  things,  but  it  seems  to  be  returning.  The  latest 
opera,    Wagner's   "Parsifal,"    has  a  grand   and   solemn 

1G5 


l66  "  SACRILEGIOUS   PLAYS. 

spectacle  of  tlie  Kniglits  of  the  Holy  Grail  taking  the 
sacrament.  Catholics  hold  this  to  be  the  very  body  and 
blood  of  Jesus  Christ;  Protestants,  that  it  is  so  in  a 
** spiritual  sense";  all,  that  it  is  a  sacred  rite.  In  another 
act,  Parsifal,  as  a  preparatory  ordeal  for  recovering  the 
sacred  spear  from  the  diabolical  enemy,  is  subjected  to 
trial  of  his  constancy  by  the  voluptuous  charms  and 
blandishments  of  the  nymphs  of  the  ballet.  Beholders  say 
the  effect  of  this  opera  is  deeply  religious.  Wagner  says  it 
is  so  religious  in  character  that  it  should  not  be  performed 
elsewhere  than  at  Bayreuth,  to  which  people  come  in  a 
state  of  mind. 

In  ''Freischiitz"  Agathe  kneels  and  sings  a  prayer. 
It  is  a  religious  act,  and  is  done  with  the  accompaniment 
of  orchestra,  and  in  the  face  of  an  audience  who  come  for 
pleasure.  Yet  the  prayer  is  so  natural  in  her  distress,  and 
is  so  sweet  and  prayerful,  that  the  audience  is  religiously 
affected.  So  is  the  religious  feeling  deeply  moved  when 
Zerlina,  in  "  Fra  Diavolo,"  as  she  is  undressing  in  her 
bed-chamber,  unconscious  of  the  presence  of  the  bandits 
who  are  watching  and  mocking  her,  kneels  and  commends 
herself  to  the  keeping  of  the  Blessed  Virgin;  and  again, 
when  sleeping,  she  unconsciously  repeats  words  of  the 
prayer  as  the  bandit  is  about  to  strike  his  dagger  into  her, 
and  he,  cowed  by  the  sacred  words,  is  unable  to  do  the 
deed. 

Sacred  things  dramatically  presented  on  the  stage  do 
not  seem  sacrilegious.  They  are  easily  described  as  such, 
especially  to  those  who  think  the  theatre  wicked;  but 
spectators  see  them  without  consciousness  of  sacrilege  or 
sin.  The  oratorios  have  religious  personages  and  events, 
and  prayers,  and  praise,  and  hallelujahs,  sung  by  sinners, 
and  heard  by  audiences  as  musical  entertainments.  Masses 
— the  sacred  music  of  the  worship  and  prayers  of  the 


SACKILEGIOUS   PLAYS.  167 

Savior's  sacrifice  for  tlie  redemption  of  man  —  are  sung  in 
our  festivals  as  a  mere  performance.  John  Sebastian 
Bach's  *' Passion  Music ''is  a  lyrical  rendition  in  dramatic 
form  of  the  life  and  death  of  the  Savior,  and  is  done  and 
heard  as  a  mere  musical  entertainment. 

All  this  shows  that  the  drama  has  entered  so  largely 
into  religious  things,  that  the  line  has  become  fine,  and 
can  not  be  made  consistent.  Religion  is  so  tremendous  an 
element  in  mankind  thg,t  the  drama  can  not  get  along 
without  it.  If  it  avoids  sacrilege  to  the  feelings  of  the  time 
by  taking  the  classical  or  pagan  religions,  as  for  examiile, 
"  Norma,'^  which  is  all  religious,  yet  this  is  hardly  a  more 
religious  notion  of  sacred  things  than  that  of  the  Protest- 
ants who  are  not  shocked  by  Catholic  holy  rites  on  the 
stage,  or  than  of  the  Catholics  who  can  see  no  sacrilege  in 
making  Protestant  religious  things  parts  of  the  drama. 

In  the  opera  of  "Moses  in  Egypt "^re  prayers  and 
altar  services  by  Moses  and  the  Hebrews ;  a  colossal  eye  in 
the  cloudy  background,  to  represent  the  All-seeing  eye; 
Moses  works  the  miracle  of  restorin-g  light  to  the  darkened 
day,  and  of  calling  down  a  thunderbolt  to  break  the  image 
of  Osiris;  the  Hebrews  pass  through  the  parted  Red  Sea, 
its  waves  made  by  kicking-boys  underneath  green  canvas, 
and  escape  behind  the  wings.  Moses  is  priestly  and  majes- 
tic, and  all  is  solemn  until  it  comes  to  the  passage  of  the 
Red  Sea,  which  is  a  se^vere  strain  of  the  imagination  to 
make  all  seem  adequate. 

Perhaps  the  rudest  invasion  of  holy  things  is  by  the 
recent  opera  "  Mefistofele."  In  the  "Prologue  in  Heaven," 
all  the  heavenly  host  and  the  throne  are  supposed  to  be 
present  but  invisible,  and  the  saints  and  angels  round  the 
throne  sing  hail  and  holy,  and  Mephisto,  who  is  visible, 
mocks  their  worship  and  chaffs  them,  and  scoffs  at  their 
"  Sovereign  Lord,"  and  challenges  him  to  a  trial  of  jiower. 
And  so,  through  the  medium  of  the  saints  and  angels  a 


168  SACEILEGIOUS   PLATS. 

wager  is  laid,  resembling,  that  for  the  trial  of  Job;  and 
Mephisto  undertakes  to  tempt  Faust  to  his  destruction. 
This  seems  not  to  have  aroused  any  sensibilities  of  sacri- 
lege. 

The  office  of  a  priest  is  sacred  to  the  Catholics.  The 
Protestant  thinks  the  minister's  a  holy  calling;  although 
in  his  relation  of  pew-owner  he  may  hold  the  minister  sub- 
ject to  his  notion.  Priests  are  put  into  plays,  even  to 
administer  marriage,  which  Catholics  call  a  sacrament,  and 
which  Protestants  think  God's  holy  ordinance,  and  that  it 
should  be  sacred  so  long  as  the  tempers  are  compatible. 
Mr.  George  Wilkes,  who  has  commented  on  Shakspeare 
''from  an  American  point  of  view,"  proves  that  secretly  he 
was  a  Catholic.  The  evidence  is  that  his  Catholic  priests  are 
reverend  men;  such  as  the  priest  at  the  burial  of  Ophelia, 
and  Friar  Lawrence  in  "  Eomeo  and  Juliet,"  who  made  a 
pretty  mess  of  it;  and,  on  the  other  hand, that  his  "reformed" 
ministers  are  scurvy  fellows,  such  as  Sir  Oliver  Martext  and 
Sir  Hugh  Evans. 

In  the  church  scene  in  the  opera  of  "Faust,"  the  stage 
presents  an  altar  and  the  officiating  priest  and  acolytes. 
Catholics  think  this  the  place  where  the  sacrifice  of  the 
Savior  is  rejieated.  Some  of  them  rise  and  leave  the  theatre 
when  this  scene  is  presented,  thus  letting  their  light  shine. 
It  does  not  apjjear  to  shock  the  feelings  of  the  Protestants. 
The  theme  of  the  whole  drama  is  that  prof  oundest  affair  of 
mankind,  the  perdition  or  salvation  of  a  soul.  The  drama 
would  be  weak  if  forbidden  to  touch  this  greatest  of  the 
concerns  of  life.  It  does  enter  largely  into  it,  and  the  line 
of  discrimination  has  become  fine  and  inconsistent.  Per- 
haps, if  rationally  viewed,  the  worst  sacrilege  is  in  the  use 
of  the  words  and  music  of  worship  and  of  the  greatest  of 
sacraments,  for  mere  musical  entertainment.  Whether  the 
present  lino  Avill  last  is  a  thing  which  can  not  be  foretold, 
but  for  the  present  it  gives  great  satisfaction. 


XXXVII. 

THE  CHILDREN  OF  THE  STRONG- 
MINDED, 

AEASH  EDITOR  of  a  paper  in  that  iiucultured  region 
which  is  called  Out  West,  made  a  mannish  fling  at  the 
lot  of  orators  at  a  woman's  suUrage  convention  by  this: 

"  Several  platform  women  were  there.  These  women 
were  either  old  maids  or  married  wo?nen  who  were  not  par- 
ticularly happy  at  home.  There  is  not  a  single  woman  on 
the  platform  of  female  suffrage  in  the  whole  broad  land 
who  has  a  happy  family  of  husband  and  children,  not  one.'^ 

A  friend  to  woman  took  this  as  meaning  that  these 
platform  speakers  lacked  ability  to  perpetuate  their  S2)ecics. 
He  wrote  Miss  Susan  B.  Anthony  about  it,  as  the  highest 
authority. 

Miss  Anthony  has  at  all  points  the  best  intellectual 
equipment  of  all  the  apostles  of  woman's  rights;  but  she 
was  unable  to  state  in  her  own  case  the  effect  of  intellec- 
tual activity  on  the  child-bearing  ability.  She  said,  how- 
ever, that  she  is  the  only  one  of  the  pioneers  of  the  suffrage 
movement  who  has  refrained  from  marrying,  and  she  gave 
the  number  and  sex  of  the  children  of  the  most  distin- 
guished of  her  co-laborers.  For  Miss  Susan  B.  Anthony 
is  the  St.  Paul  of  the  woman's  rights  dispensation — the 
only  one  who  can  kee])  contiiient  to  this  exclusive  devotion 
to  the  cause  of  her  down-trodden  sex. 

A  scientist  has  taken  hold  of  these  statistics,  and  has 
pointed  out  that  of  the  offspring  of  five  of  the  most  distin- 
guished orak)rs,  namely,  Antoinette  Brown  Black  well, 
Lucy   Stone,    LucreLia   Mott,   Mrs.   Livermore  and  Mrs. 

109 


170  THE  CHILDREN  OF  THE  STRONG-MINDED. 

Blake^  making  nineteen  in  all,  seventeen  are  girls.  This 
is  remarkable  enough  to  excite  inquiry  as  to  the  cause.  The 
eleven  mothers  listed  have  forty-four  children,  which  seems 
a  fair  fecundity  in  an  old  community;  but  the  scientist 
jDoints  to  the  fact  that  twenty-five  are  females,  to  nineteen 
males,  showing  a  preponderance  of  twenty-five  per  cent,  of 
females  in  the  families  of  the  strong  minded  women; 
whereas  in,  general,  the  sexes  are  about  equal  in  the  births. 

The  suffragists  need  not  trouble  themselves  about  peo- 
pling the  earth.  Unless  it  can  be  made  better,  it  is  a  ques- 
tion if  population  is  commendable.  The  whole  had  to  be 
drowned,  once,  like  a  surplus  litter  of  blind  kittens,  and  the 
testimony  of  all  the  preachers  is  that  the  need  is  as  great 
now  as  then.  Enough  will  attend  to  the  affair  of  perjjet- 
uating  the  species,  while  the  strong-minded  apply  them- 
selves to  a  higher  mission.  A  division  of  labor  —  the  in- 
tellectual taking  the  jilatform,  and  tlie  jjlacid  doing  the 
family  duty  —  may  give  higher  results  in  this  as  in  other 
arts. 

Men  and  women  in  all  times  have  devoted  their  lives 
to  special  services  to  mankind,  sacrificing  domestic  joys, 
and  feken  on  vows  of  celibacy.  If  the  advocates  of  wo- 
man's rights  had  followed  the  example  of  Susan  B.  An- 
thony, and  dwelt  in  maiden  meditation,  fancy  free,  in  order 
to  devote  soul,  mind  and  strength  to  the  cause  of  their  sex, 
they  might  have  approached  her  intellectual  eminence. 
And  they  need  not  have  concerned  themselves  about  pop- 
ulation. Herein  was  Mrs.  Cady  Stanton's  weakness.  She 
prided  herself  more  on  the  mere  fact  of  being  married,  and 
having  children  —  a  relation  common  to  all  viling  crea- 
tures—  than  on  her  mind  or  her  cause. 

The  affair  of  procreating  would  take  care  of  itself 
without  any  need  to  divert  their  minds  from  their  great 
mission.    And  if  it  be  true  that  the  mental  activity  of  the 


THE   C'Hll.IiUKxX    OK  THE  STliONG-MlN  DEI).  171 

beuriiig  of  a  great  cause  restricts  child-bearing,  it  is  the 
more  reason  for  leaving  the'  office  to  those  women  whose 
powers  of  maternity  and  lines  of  beauty  are  not  diminished 
by  shriveling  thought. 

One  of  the  most  distinguished  of  the  suffrage  orators 
has  said  on  the  platform  that  to  bring  a  daughter  into  the 
world  where  women  are  so  opi)ressod  made  her  to  weep 
and  to  wail.  But  she  must  have  thought  better  of  it,  for 
she  is  listed  by  Miss  Anthony  as  having  two  children,  both 
girls.*  LikeAvise,  her  colaborers  must  have  thought  differ- 
ently, for  they  continued  to  repeat  girls.  And  there  is 
good  reason  for  this  sober  second  thought,  as  will  appear 
fHrther  along. 

All  the  elements  of  the  problem  must  be  taken  in  before 
a  scientific  fact  can  be  deduced.  The  inquiry  must 
embrace  the  men  whom  these  intellectual  women  have 
married  before  it  can  derive  anything  from  the  paucity  or 
number  or  sex  of  the  offspring.  The  sage  magistrate  of 
Messina' cited  the  maxim:  "  An  two  men  ride  of  a  horse, 
one  must  ride  behind.^'  If  it  be  true  that  but  one  in  the 
yoke  can  be  strong-minded,  this  fact  must  be  taken  into 
the  account  as  bearing  on  the  fruitfulness  of  the  pair  and 
the  sex  of  the  children. 

That  women  whose  minds  run  on  female  wrongs  and 
man's  oj^pressions,  and  who  often  feel  the  inflation  of  the 
oratorical  fervor,  and  the  inspiration  of  a  symjiathetic 
audience,  should  conceive  'females,  is  according  to  nature. 
By  the  same  law  their  girls  will  be  strong  minded;  will 
have  great  intellectual  activity,  and  will  take  up,  genera- 
tion after  generation,  with  increasing  numbers  and  intel- 
lectual power,  the  mission  which  their  mothers  stamped  on 
their  beginning. 

Therefore,  when  rightly  viewed,  the  preponderance  of 
female  births  in  the  platform  orators  of  the  suffrage  move- 


173  THE  CHILDEEN  OF  THE   STRONG-MINDED. 

ment  is  a  constantly  growing  power  for  woman's  emanci- 
pation. So  will  the  advocates  of  her  cause  increase  and 
multiply  and  make  the  earth  resound.  Who  can  doubt 
that  with  this  multiplication  of  its  species  it  will  ultimately 
prevail?  And  if  this  high  work  leaves  their  male  yoke- 
fellows in  mental  resignation  and  weak  inactivity,  is  not 
this  as  well  as  the  requirement  on  the  other  side,  that 
woman  shall  not  think  and  shall  not  find  out  her  rights 
and  wrongs,  nor  know  good  and  evil,  lest  she  weaken  the 
maternal  function?  • 


XXXYIII. 
THE  THEATRE. 

THE  theatre  is  under  the  ban  of  the  truly  good,  and 
periodically  it  receives  a  blast  of  anathemas  from  the 
pulpit;  yet  it  is  the  chief  popular  recreation  in  the 
large  cities,  and,  under  the  circuit  system,  is  rapidly 
extending  into  the  small  towns.  A  number  of  Ohio  towns 
of  from  ten  to  twenty  thousand  inhabitants  have  theatres 
as  handsome  as  any  in  Cincinnati.  Theatre  notices  are 
a  leading  feature  in  the  city  journals.  Yet  the  truly  good, 
who  never  attend  the  theatre,  pronounce  it  wicked,  and 
would  make  actors  and  actresses  outcasts.  A  clergyman 
who  does  the  burial  service  over  an  actor  is  celebrated  as 
exceptionally  liberal.  Even  he  has  to  deplore  that  the 
departed  chose  such  aprofe.-sion.  This  custom  led  the  late 
Charles  Thorne  to  resolve,  with  two  brother  actors,  that 
no  burial  service  should  be  performed  for  him. 

In  the  land  is  heard  the  sound  of  lamentation  over  the  de- 
cline of  the  influence  of  the  pulpit;  yet  the  theatre  increases. 
If  it  were  bad,  the  outlook  for  society  would  be  bad. 
Many  seem  to  find  a  pious  enjoyment  in  saying  that  the 
outlook  is  utterly  bad,  Wiiat  is  the  theatre?  A  personi- 
fied portrayal  of  human  experience.  Tlie  playwright's 
fancy  can  not  transcend  the  reality  of  existence.  It  is  a 
representation  of  scenes  of  universal  humanity,  delivered 
so  as  to  seem  real  events.  It  is  a  portrayal,  in  a  life-like 
form,  of  scenes  in  tlie  battle  of  life;  of  the  passions  of 
human  nature;  of  great  and  mean  ambitions;  great  and 
mean  crimes,  and  of  retributions;  of  courage  and  coward- 
ice; of  whatever  is  heroic  in  human  nature,  contrasted 

173 


174  THE  THEATRE. 

with  mean  passions;'  of  the  eternal  contention  between 
good  and  evil,  with  an  improvement  over  the  way  this  con- 
tention is  portrayed  in  the  pulpit,  in  that  on  the  stage 
good  generally  gets  the  better  of  evil. 

Like  as  experience  in  great  trials  is  more  effective  than 
written  maxims,  so  is  the  dramatic  delineation  of  the  traits 
and  trials  of  hnmanity  more  powerful  than  preaching. 
This  impersonation  is  a  high  art,  embracing  the  accom- 
plishments of  oratory,  the  graces  of  action,  and  the  rare 
combination  of  the  faculty  to  conceive  the  character,  and 
the  faculty  to  deliver  that  conception.  The  theatre  is  an 
education  in  speech.  Preachers  might  do  well  to  study 
the  elocution  of  its  masters.  The  worthy  pursuit  of  this 
art  is  an  honorable  profession.  It  has  been  distinguished 
by  men  and  women  of  rare  gifts  of  body  and  mind,  who 
brought  to  this  laborious  art  the  lire  of  genius  and  the 
enthusiasm  of  great  ambition. 

There  are  theatres  and  theatres.  Why  should  othse 
that  are  high  be  rated  with  the  low?  This  is  not  the  way 
we  judge  the  newspaj^er  press  or  the  book  press.  There 
are  vile  newspapers  and  vile  books.  An  ill  rejiute  remains 
to  the  theatre  from  olden  times,  when  plays  ran  much  to 
coarseness;  when  women  of  fashion  went  masked  to  the 
theatre  because  of  its  indelicacy;  not,  however,  because  of 
their  own  delicacy.  Yet  many  of  those  who  condemn  the 
stage,  affect  a  liberality  by  speaking  of  it  as  degraded  from 
the  olden  time.  Of  these  are  they  who  join  the  general 
affectation  of  lauding  the  Shakespeare  plays  as  refined,  and 
moral,  and  religious.  Yet  they  have  to  be  much  pruned 
for  the  present  stage.  And  the  critic  who  is  not  demented 
by  the  Shakespeare  mania,  would  look  in  vain,  in  most  of 
them,  for  a  sign  that  the  playwright  had  any  sentiment  of 
morals,  or  care  for  anything  but  the  stage  business. 

The  theatre  has  steadily  grown  in  decency.     The  plays 


THE  THEATRE.  175 

which  run  on  the  ragged  edge  of  indelicacy  are  those  that 
are  called  classical,  and  are  the  best  remains  of  the  olden 
time.  Earely  is  anything  offensive  spoken  in  the  theatres 
which  are  classed  as  respectable.  Tlie  theatre  of  our  time 
is  moral.  It  holds  virtue  up  to  admiration  and  vice  to 
reprobation.  In  the  drama  poverty  is  no  disgrace;  whicli 
can  hardly  be  said  of  fashionable  society,  church  society, 
or  any  other  society.  Rags  are  honorable  on  the  he  or  slie 
who  is  struggling  with  misfortune.  The  theatre  has  no 
respect  for  riches  without  generosity.  Only  in  this  mimic 
world  is  justice  executed  without  respect  to  jjcrsons.  'J'lie 
sympathies  of  its  beholders  are  always  with  the  oppressed, 
and  they  give  the  oppressor  what  he  deserves. 

In  the  corrupted  currents  of  this  world — as  was  observed 
by  Hamlet's  TJncle — offense's  gilded  hand  may  shove  by 
justice,  and  the  wicked  gains  themselves  may  bribe  the 
law,  and  make  society  and  Church  respect  the  great  thief; 
but  it  is  not  so  in  the  theatre.  There  tlie  action  is  judged 
on  its  merit,  and  riches  are  no  shelter  from  retribution. 
The  poverty  of  our  country  in  the  literary  talent  for  play- 
writing — as  well  as  in  general  literary  talent — and  the 
needs  of  the  numerous  dramatic  companies  have  brought 
out  many  American  plays  that  are  very  crude.  Indeed, 
an  American  play  is  a  fearful  name.  But,  as  a  class,  they 
are  dreadfully  moral.  They  make  the  way  of  the  trans- 
gressor harder  than  it  is  in  either  fashionable  or  religious 
society,  and  show  that,  although  the  wicked  may  flourish 
for  a  time,  he  is  cut  down  at  last  like  a  green  bay  tree. 

The  truly  good  think  the  gallery  of  the  theatre  especially 
bad — depraving  the  boys  and  young  men  and  the  "  lower 
classes, '^  who  have  not  acquired  the  character  to  resist  its 
bad  influence.  But  the  sinful  gallery  is  vociferous  in  its 
morals.  The  tritest  moral  sentiment  brings  it  down.  It 
applauds  all  that  is  good  and  heroic,  and  hisses  all  tliat  is 


176  THE  THEATRE. 

mean  and  cruel.  The  heavy  villain,  or  the  smooth  and 
sanctimonious  villain,  has  an  ungrateful  part  to  play  before 
the  righteous  Judgments  of  this  wicked  part  of  the 
theatre  congregation.  It  specially  admires  the  heroic 
courage  which  defies  the  tyrant  and  his  minions;  v/hich 
rescues  beleaguered  innocence  from  villainy  and  helpless 
lives  from  peril;  which  plunges  into  the  burning  house 
and  fetches  out  the  fainted  damsel,  and  then  marries  her; 
which  brings  to  retribution  the  hard-hearted  landlord,  who 
has  turned  the  sick  laborer  and  his  wife  and  nine  small 
children  into  the  street.  It  applauds  all  that  is  high  in 
conduct,  and  scorns  all  that  is  base. 

Wherein  is  the  badness  of  tlie  stage  which  subjects  it 
to  the  general  condemnation  of  the  truly  good  ?  In  general, 
this  sentence  lacks  specification,  and  when  it  attempts  to 
specify  it  shows  total  ignorance  of  what  the  theatre  is. 
Last  Sunday  the  Rev.  Dr.  Howard  Crosby,  of  New  York, 
did  put  an  accusation  into  form,  by  declaring  that  even 
the  best  of  the  theatres  are  but  places  of  vice,  where  the 
marriage  vow  is  made  light  of,  and  where  most  of  the 
plays  hinge  upon  some  filthy  intrigue.  But  this  is  untrue. 
If  the  Rev.  Crosby  were  not  truly  good,  it  would  be  very 
wicked  in  him  to  pronounce  such  a  calumny  on  the  theatre 
and  on  those  who  attend.  Tliere  is  a  piety  which  consists 
of  dreadful  pictures  of  the  wickedness  of  the  world  and 
of  giving  thanks  that  we  are  not  as  they. 

In  general,  when  the  truly  good  try  to  give  a  reason 
for  calling  the  theatre  bad,  they  come  down  to  a  meaner 
one  than  this  by  alleging  the  immoral  lives  of  members  of 
the  dramatic  profession.  By  this  they  give  tongue  to  a 
cruel  calumny  against  a  whole  class,  for  the  supposed 
errors  of  some,  of  which  they  can  know  nothing.  They 
are  mere  scandal-mongers.  What  do  they  know  of  the 
private  lives  of  actors  and  actresses?   What  business  have 


THE   THEATRE.  I'J"? 

they  to  know?  They  either  go  out  of  their  way  to  hunt 
for  scaudal,  or  they  take  it  to  tliemselves  without  evidence. 
They  whose  minds  are  unclean,  have  nothing  in  their 
bodies  to  brag  of.  That  the  mind  is  tlie  real  existence  is 
both  scriptural  and  scientific.  Yet  not  a  few  think  that 
to  be  ever  talking  of  sexual  sins  proves  their  own  purity. 

Theatre  circles  are  no  better  than  society  circles; 
scandal  is  entertaining  to  them,  and  is  as  reckless,  envious 
and  cruel,  and  members  of  the  profession  are  peculiarly 
exposed  to  this  low  part  of  human  nature.  But  as  to  the 
truth  of  such  scandals,  people  who  do  not  busy  themselves 
to  fish  in  such  foulness  can  know  nothing,  and  honorable 
people  will  not  descend  to  this  scandul-mongcring,  nor 
utter  v/ithout  knowledge.  The  public's  relation  to  the 
members  of  the  dramatic  profusion  is  as  artists,  the  same 
as  the  works  of  the  sculptor  and  painter.  Their  acting  in 
the  characters  of  the  play  is  all  that  the  public  can  know 
or  can  properly  care  for  as  to  their  characters. 

Men  and  women  whose  great  endowments  have  honored 
this  profession,  have  honored  it  by  lives  as  good  as  those 
who  would  make  them  outcasts.  This  calumny  testifies 
only  to  the  badness  of  the  minds  which  utter  it.  The 
theatre,  in  the  face  of  this  pious  ban,  is  growing  more  and 
more  into  prominence  as  the  popular  recreation,  as  an 
educator  of  the  people,  and  as  a  moral  power.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  moral  influence  of  those  who  condemn  the 
theatre  is  comparatively  growing  less.  This  is  a  social 
problem  which  needs  a  new  method  of  treatment. 


IS 


XXXIX. 

THE  REAL  DISABILITY  OF  WOMAN. 

WOMEN  who  think  they  are  emancipated  in  spirit, 
and  who  set  themselves  up  as  apostles  of  woman's 
rights,  betray  that  they  are  still  servile,  by  making  the  fact 
of  marriage  a  higher  boast,  and  by  casting  reli  ections  on 
their  own  sisters  in  the  cause,  because  a  man  has  not  saved 
them.  Thus  Mrs.  Henry  B.  Stanton  has  been  heard  to  say 
on  the  platform,  on  which  sat  Susan  B.  Anthony  and  other 
advocates  of  woman's  rights,  single  and  married,  that  she 
was  a  happy  wife  and  mother;  boasting  thereby  her  supe- 
riority, and  casting  the  reflection  that  the  general  lot  of 
advocates  of  woman  suffrage  are  soured  maids  or  disappoint- 
ed wives. 

She  who  must  have  a  man  to  lean  upon,  or  boast  of,  is 
not  herself  emancipated,  and  can  not  have  great  power  as 
an  advocate  of  woman's  enfranchisement.  Of  all  the  women 
who  have  taken  the  platform  for  woman's  cause,  Susan  B. 
Anthony  is  the  best  endowed,  intellectually,  and  is  the 
most  free  from  this  servile  spirit  and  from  all  the  womanly 
weaknesses  which  make  them  seek  the  protection  or 
admiration  of  man.  Yet,  this  has  made  her  almost  iso- 
lated, even  among  those  who  regard  themselves  as  having  a 
special  mission  to  declare  woman's  indej)endence;  for  all 
these  have  made  husbands  and  children  the  chief  end  of 
their  existence.  There  was  pathos,  as  well  as  cause  for 
thought  on  the  possibilities  of  woman's  cause,  in  Miss 
Anthony's  remark  to  a  friend,  just  before  she  sailed  for 
Europe: 

*'  I  feel  lonely  here.     Everybody  else  who  has  been  iden- 
178 


THE   REAL   DISABILITY   OP   WOMAN.  17'J 

tificd  witli  tlic  movement  for  the  advancement  of  women 
seems  to  have  ceased  to  live  for  the  cause  and  is  living  for 
herself.  I  am  probably  the  only  one  of  the  many  women 
who  are  striving  for  the  emancipation  of  the  sex  who  has 
been  nnsurrounded  by  home  duties  and  home  cares.  Eliz- 
abeth Cady  Stanton  has  seven  children.  Antoinette  Brown 
Blackwell  is  the  mother  of  five  girls.  Lucretia  Mott  lias 
six  children,  Lillie  Devereux  Blake  has  two,  Mrs.  Olympia 
Brown  two,  Martha  C.  Wright  five,  Belva  A.  Lock  wood 
two,  and  even  Lucy  Stone  has  one.  They  are  all  surround- 
ed by  home  comforts  and  more  or  less  moved  by  home 
interests.  I  am  all  alone.  I  begin  to  feel  as  though  I  had 
no  place,  and  I  am  going  abroad.  Not  that  I  hope  to 
accomplish  anything  on  the  other  side,  or  that  things  will 
be  much  better  when  I  return,  but  because  I  feel  I  ought 
to  have  some  change." 

To  say  that  her  sisters  in  the  movement  are  married, 
and  have  ceased  to  live  for  the  cause,  embraces  but  a  small 
part  of  the  fact.  They  have  regarded  marriage  and  the 
protection  of  a  man  as  the  highest  attainment.  They  tell 
others  to  be  free  of  man,  while  they  seek  bondage  to  him, 
and  regard  his  chain  as  their  most  honorable  decoration. 

What  chance  has  woman  for  emancijiation  when  her 
own  nature  seeks  subjection?  She  declaims  for  freedom 
on  the  platform,  while  her  heart  embraces  captivity  as  her 
chief  glory.  She  makes  the  freedom  of  her  sisters  their 
chief  reproach.  Even  the  great  intellect  of  Susan  B. 
Anthony,  and  the  great  honor  she  has  given  to  her  sex,will 
not  save  hot-  from  the  pity  of  shallow-minded  dcclaimersin 
the  same  cause,»who  are  possessed  by  men.  She  sees  that 
the  radical  disability  of  woman  is  in  her  own  nature,  and 
that  custom  and  law  have  simply  conformed  to  it.  She 
beholds  that  her  sisters  in  the  movement  for  the  advance- 
ment of  woman  have  found  their  own  highest  advancement 


180  THE   REAL   DISABILITY   OP   WOMAK". 

in  marriage,  and  that  woman's  nature  is  to  seek  this  as  her 
destiny. 

Her  remarks  sound  like  a  lament  for  the  mistaken  devo- 
tion of  mind  and  a  life;  as  if  she  had  realized  that  the 
movement  for  woman's  advancement  is  abstractly  intellect- 
ual, and  has  taken  no  hold  on  her  true  nature;  as  if,  after 
devoting  her  life  and  intellectual  endowment  to  what  she 
thought  the  cause  of  woman,  she  had  reached  the  sad  con- 
viction that  woman's  subjection  to  man  is  in  the  order  of 
nature.  The  foremost  advocate  of  the  rights  of  her  sex 
finds  that  she  has  no  place  among  them.  She  does  not 
expect  to  do  any  good  abroad,  nor  to  find  things  any  better 
when  she  comes  back,  but  she  seeks  a  change.  Yet  other 
women  will  rise  up,  and  with  lesser  mental  furniture  will 
declaim  the  emancipation  of  woman,  and  will  keep  their 
eye  on  the  main  chance  of  bondage  to  a  man  as  their  high- 
est advancement. 


XL. 

LESSONS  OF  THE  FLOOD. 

THE  FIRST  lesson  of  the  Ohio  River  flood  is  of  char- 
ity to  the  antedihivians,  and  of  thankfulness  that 
we  are  not  held  to  the  same  judgment.  There  has  been 
plentiful  lack  of  this  charity.  The  world  has  assumed  that 
they  were  served  right  because  it  is  written  that  they  were 
wicked,  and  thereupon  has  commended  its  own  goodness. 
But  were  they  more  wicked  than  this  generation?  Accord- 
ing to  the  general  notions  of  time,  they  had  not  had  so  long 
a  spell  in  which  to  grow  wicked.  The  common  belief  of 
the  good  is  that  the  people  continually  grow  wickeder,  and 
the  longer  the  time  the  greater  the  degree  of  wickedness. 
If  the  description  made  by  the  truly  good  may  be  received, 
the  people  are  now  very  wicked.  Said  a  preacher  last 
Sunday,  expounding  God's  providence  in  the  Ohio  River 
flood: 

"Behold  a  more  fearful,  more  devastating  flood,  the 
flood  of  sin,  by  which  our  whole  city  is  submerged.  The 
onrushing  flood,  seething,  foaming,  unchecked,  damning, 
is  upon  us.  The  very  foundations  of  the  city  shake  with 
the  swelling  thereof.  Behold  the  sight!  Thousands  of 
saloons  where  flow  the  waters  of  death;  gambling  hells, 
open  day  and  night;  brothels  open  on  every  street,  with  their 
thousands  of  '  strange  women '  to  tempt  and  destroy,  unob- 
structed in  their  hellish  traffic  in  human  flesh.  Behold  the 
onrush  of  the  proud  waves  of  this  flood  in  the  flaunting 
infidelity;  the  rank  atheism;  the  political  corruption;  the 
obsequious  press;  obscene  literature;  the  Sabbath  desecra- 
tion; the  godless  theatres,  with  minstrel  shows  and  obscene 

181 


182  LESSOlfS   OF  THE  FLOOD. 

and  filthy  plays,  profaning  the  sacred  day,  making  it  a 
holiday  instead  of  a  holy  day;  the  broken  moral  and  civil 
Sabbath  laws,  that  give  us  a  day  of  wine  and  wassail,  and 
not  of  worship." 

This  presents  a  picture  of  more  elaborate  and  highly 
developed  wickedness  than  the  Scripture  account  of  the 
antediluvians,  which  is  thus: 

''And  God  saw  that  the  wickedness  of  man  was  great 
in  the  earth,  and  that  every  imagination  of  the  thoughts 
of  his  heart  was  only  evil  continually.  And  it  repented  the 
Lord  that  He  had  made  man  on  the  earth,  and  it  grieved 
Him  at  His  heart." 

Can  things  have  been  worse  than  this  before  the  reform 
flood?  On  the  contrary,  some  of  the  most  potent  of  these 
causes  of  sin  have  no  mention  in  those  times.  Minstrel 
shows  are  a  recent  American  invention.  The  theatre,  as 
it  now  is,  is  modern.  The  Italian  opera,  the  most  sensuous 
form  of  the  drama,  is  of  recent  development.  Political 
corruption  is  particularly  rank  in  constitutional  and  popu- 
lar governments,  which  are  modern  contrivances.  Noah 
must  have  preserved  all  the  gambling  device  of  his  time, 
and,  as  perpetuated,  it  was  only  a  casting  of  lots  divinely 
directed.  Nor  does  the  preacher  touch  upon  the  worst  of 
gambling,  namely,  that  in  ideal  stocks  and  ideal  produce, 
whose  daily  reports  have  a  large  sj)ace  in  our  newspapers, 
and  which  is  immeasurably  the  more  tempting  and  the 
more  ruinous  because  it  is  held  respectable,  and  its  votaries 
hold  costly  pews  in  the  churches. 

The  only  clear  mention  of  intoxicating  drink  in  Scripture 
is  of  wine — a  very  inconvenient  liquor  to  carry  and  to  keep. 
The  common  belief  is  that  distilling  is  a  modern  invention. 
The  Sitka  Indians  improvise  a  still  with  acouple  of  petro- 
leum cans;  but  the  history  shows  that  Noah  had  no  means 
of  intoxication  till  he  had  planted  vines  and  grown  grapes, 


LESSONS  or  TirE   FLOOD.  183 

which  must  have  taken  as  much  as  three  years.  The  com- 
mon notion  is  that  intemperance  docs  not  grow  to  great 
porportions  in  wine  countries.  In  the  statistical  argument 
of  the  salvation  of  our  world  through  prohibition  of  the 
manufacture  and  sale  of  spirits,  it  is  stated  that  ninety-five 
per  cent,  of  our  social  evils  is  caused  by  drink.  If  we  set 
off  five  per  cent,  of  this  to  vinous  and  nuilt  liquors,  still  there 
is  left  ninety  per  cent,  of  wickedness  of  our  world  from  a 
cause  Avhich  did  not  exist  before  the  flood. 

As  they  had  no  newspapers,  they  were  exempt  from  that 
part  of  the  flood  of  sin  which  is  made  by  an  obsequious 
press.  In  the  primitive  social  relations  of  polygamy  and 
concubinage,  the  "  strange  women  "  Avere  not  so  great  a 
social  evil  as  in  monogamous  civilization.  Obscene  litera- 
ture has  come  from  the  art  of  printing  and  a  free  press,  both 
of  which  are  modern  inventions.  No  mention  is  made  of 
political  parties,  of  packed  conventions,  landgrabbing rail- 
roads, blind  pools,  political  assessments,  or  fraudulent  elec- 
tions in  those  days.  The  greater  numljcr  of  the  sins  of 
modern  civilization  have  no  mention  in  the  time  before  the 
flood. 

That  unbelief  abounded  is  probable;  but  is  it  likely  that 
it  was  any  worse  than  when  Eobert  IngersoU  travels  from 
city  to  city,  drawing  crowds  that  fill  the  largest  theatres, 
and  finds  it  profitable  to  scoff  at  all  beliefs  save  in  himself? 
Were  people  before  the  flood  more  inclined  than  this  gen- 
eration to  set  up  other  things  than  the  true  God  as  the 
supreme  object  of  man's  pursuit?  That  the  Sabbath  "was 
broken  then,  as  Sunday  is  now,  is  likely,  but  not  any  worse 
than  now  —  probably  not  so  bad,  as  they  lacked  several  of 
the  breaking  instrumentalities  which  are  here  enumerated. 
Probably  they  had  other  immoralities,but  they  appear  to  be 
exempt  from  those  things  which  make  the  greater  part  of 
our  sins.    Without  these  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  they  can 


184  LESSONS  OF  THE  FLOOD. 

have  been  so  wicked  as  we.  The  ninety  or  ninety-five  per 
«ent.  of  our  wickedness  which  is  charged  directly  to  spirits 
makes  a  very  large  margin  in  their  favor. 

People  have  lightly  received  the  account  of  the  flood,  as 
a  just  judgment  upon  a  wicked  world,  and  have  felt  no 
pity  for  it.  Yet  they  were  of  like  passions,  feelings,  social 
relations,  and  ambitions  as  the  world  of  our  day.  As  now, 
only  the  few  rich  could  pursue  pleasure;  the  mass  were 
struggling  simply  to  live  and  to  perpetuate  their  species. 
The  hardships  and  losses  which  we  thought  a  great  calam- 
ity, when  a  small  portion  of  our  jDopulation  was  driv6n  out 
of  the  low  lands  by  the  rising  river,  and  a  small  part  of  our 
trade  was  damaged,  were  but  the  small  beginning  of  theirs, 
as  the  continually  rising  flood  drove  them  from  all  food  and 
shelter  to  the  hills,  perishing  by  thousands  in  sight  of  each 
other,  as  the  wild  waters  climbed  after  the  flying,  until  at 
last  the  highest  place  was  overtopped,  and  the  last  man 
drowned. 

All  this  has  been  read  and  thought  on  without  pity  or 
charity.  We  asserted  that  the  flood  was  sent  upon  them 
for  their  sins,  and  that  the  punishment  was  just,  and  as  we 
are  not  drowned  we  complacently  thought  that  it  is  because 
we  are  too  good;  whereas  a  little  reflection  would  show  us 
that  we  have  added  many  inventions  in  wickedness  to  the 
simple  sins  which  the  flood  was  sent  upon.  Nor  is  our 
view  of  God's  providence  in  the  Ohio  River  flood  any  more 
charitable.  They  who  officially  expounded  this  flood  agree 
that  it  is  a  special  providence,  and  that  it  was  sent  because 
of  sin  in  the  world;  but,  as  in  the  case  of  Noah's  flood,  they 
put  the  sin  away  far  from  themselves  and  upon  people  in 
general. 

The  above  extract  enumerates  sins  enough  for  a  general 
drowning,  yet  the  flood  reached  only  the  bottoms,  and 
made  no  discrimination  between  the  justand  the  unjust,  The 


LESSONS  OF  THE  FLOOD.  185 

hard-working  father,  supporting  wife  and  little  ones  by 
daily  toil,  and  finding  consola'tion  for  a  hard  lot  here  in  the 
promise  of  an  easy  one  hereafter,  and  the  faithful  daughter 
struggling  to  keep  a  home  for  infirm  parents,  found  their 
dwellings  invaded  by  the  pitiless  waters  the  same  as  the 
stores  of  the  sharp  trader.  Another  expounder  says  it  was 
to  teach  us  our  dependence  on  God.  How  is  that,  when 
they  who  did  put  their  trust  in  God,  and  daily  gave  thanks 
for  his  protection,  were  served  the  same  as  they  who  trusted 
in  riches?  Another  says  it  Avas  to  teach  us  to  lay  up  treas- 
ures in  heaven,  where  they  are  above  high  water.  But 
would  these  feed  those  Avhose  provision  was  swept  away? 
And  shall  they  not  still  respect  the  command  to  '*be  dil- 
igent in  business  and  fervent  in  spirit?  " 

One  says  that  it  is  a  providence,  and  has  a  meaning, 
but  what  that  meaning  is  we  may  not  undertake  to  say. 
Yet  he  conveys  that  he  knows.  When  people  talk  of  mys- 
terious providences,  they  mean  mysterious  to  others,  but 
plain  to  themselves.  A  providence  which  has  a  meaning 
that  no  fellow  can  find  out  would  hardly  be  in  the  line  of 
moral  government.  It  would  convey  no  instruction  or 
moral  lesson.  One  expounder  sets  forth  with  much  argu- 
ment that  mankind  are  a  continuous  body  politic  or  person, 
which  at  all  times  is  liable  foi  the  sins  of  all  previous 
times;  therefore,  we  can  credit  ourselves  with  the  river 
flood  against  the  National  sins  of  slavery,  and  the  corrup- 
tion of  ^'our  officials  at  Washington  a  few  years  ago." 
Thus: 

"The  National  person  suffers.  Hence  our  officials  at 
Washington,  a  few  years  ago,  became  corrupt  as  the  Valley 
of  Jehosophat,  and  the  citizens  of  Boston,  Chicago  and 
the  Northwest  suffered  from  destructive  fires.  Hence  our 
Nation  supported  human  slavery  — that  sum  of  all  villain- 
ies —  and  one  million  soldiers  fell  and  nine  billion  dollars 


186  LESSONS   OF   THE   FLOOD. 

consumed.  Heuce  our  Nation  pei'sists  in  lier  rebellion 
iigiiinst  God,  and  President  Garfield  is  cut  down  'in  his 
high  i)laces' and  we  are  suffering  untold  misery  from  de- 
structive floods." 

In  this  divine  economy  National  sins  fetch  local  lircs 
and  freshets;  Guiteau  becomes  an  instrument  of  Provi- 
dence, and  President  Garfield's  death  and  Arthur's  acces- 
sion a  judgment.  Thus  is  God's  government  an  intelligent, 
moral  government  —  to  those  to  whom  it  is  revealed. 

All  the  expoundings  agree  that  the  scourging  by  the 
flood  is  much  less  than  our  deserts.  Said  one,  referring  to 
the  Puritan  fathers: 

"  Had  the  flood  occurred  during  the  days  of  these  godly 
men,  they  would  not  have  hesitated,  I  think,  to  call  this 
flood  a  special  judgment  on  this  sin-cursed  city  and  valley 
of  Ohio.  That  its  cup  of  iniquity  is  full,  and  that  it 
deserves  a  flood  of  fire  from  heaven,  we  do  not  deny." 

Yet  he  and  another  argued  that  Providence  had  worked 
out  its  design  through  laws  made  in  the  beginning,  and 
that  this  visitation  has  come  through  the  cutting  away  of 
the  forests.  Thus  are  the  sins  of  the  woodman  who  spared 
not  the  tree  visited  upon  those  who  never  owned  one. 

Our  esteemed  contemporary,  the  Advocate,  says,  "the 
flood  reveals  the  mercy  of  God,"  because  the  conditions  cf 
a  previous  heavy  covering  of  snow,  and  such  a  rain,  migiit 
give  a  rise  of  one  hundred  feet,  whereas  we  have  had  but 
sixty-six  feet;  the  mercy  being  that  God  did  not  do  to  us 
as  badly  as  He  could.  All  seem  to  concur  in  the  opinion 
that  local  punishments  for  National  sins,  and  special  judg- 
ments which  fall  alike  upon  the  righteous  and  the  wicked, 
are  in  accordance  with  God's  moral  government,  and  they 
make  trust  in  Him,  daily  acknowledgment  of  dependence 
on  Him,  and  daily  prayer  for  His  protection,  and  daily 
devotion  to  pious  duty,  no  cause  for  discrimination  in  His 
scourgings  for  the  wickedness  of  others. 


LESSONS   OF  THE   FLOOD.  187 

In  all  this  is  there  not  a  strain  of  that  complacent 
uncharity  with  which  we  consign  the  antediluvians  to  their 
fate,  as  served  right  because  they  were  wicked  ?  When  we 
talk  of  National  sins,  and  of  our  *' sin-cursed  city,"  and  of 
a  prevailing  Avickedness,  which  deserves  a  consuming  fire, 
and  a  flood  that  would  drown  all,  do  we  mean  our  own  per- 
sonal sins?  Does  not  our  liberality  in  confessing  sin  come 
from  the  sense  that  we  are  confessing  the  sins  of  other 
people?  Or,  if  we  in  a  sort  of  general  way  include  our- 
selves, is  it  not  with  that  mental  reservation  with  which 
one  says  in  public  that  he  is  the  chief  of  sinners,  and 
thinks  how  good  he  is  to  say  so? 

The  Scripture  has  many  lessons  on  the  presumptuous- 
ness  of  undertaking  to  assist  God,  and  of  assuming  to  compre- 
hend His  mind,  and  to  expound  Ilis  counsels.  Yet  men  will 
keej)  doing  it,  and  at  the  same  time  will  talk  about  inscrut- 
able wisdom,  as  if  they  could  talk  intelligently  of  wisdom 
which  is  inscrutable.  Let  us  hold  them  to  their  frequent 
affirmation  that  the  finite  mind  can  not  comprehend  the 
infinite.  When  it  assumes  to,  it  simply  brings  the  infinite 
down  to  the  finite,  and  shapes  it  in  its  own  image,  and 
comes  out  in  a  malignant  being,  who  has  always  a  club 
uplifted,  with  nothing  to  do  but  whack  his  creatures  on 
the  head,  hitting  the  righteous  and  the  wicked  all  the 
same,  and  who  is  to  be  praised  because  he  does  not  do  as 
cruelly  as  he  can. 


XLL 

TRIAL  BY  JURY,  A  DEFEAT  OF  JUSTICE. 

A  SUITOR  who  has  confidence  in  the  justice  of  his 
cause  prefers  to  have  it  tried  by  the  Judge,  feeling 
that  justice  may  be  confused  in  the  minds  of  twelve 
jurors  who  are  not  expert  in  law,  even  if  not  chosen  from 
the  unintelligent  part  of  the  community.  This  gives  his 
estimate  of  the  value  of  trial  by  jury.  An  unjust  man, 
resisting  a  just  claim,  always  demands  a  jury,  calculating 
that  a  lawyer  may  so  confuse  the  minds  of  some  of  the 
twelve  that  justice  will  be  lost.  This  is  his  tribute  to  the 
glorious  right  of  trial  by  jury.  A  lawyer  will  say  in  sub- 
stance to  an  applicant,  that  he  has  a  very  weak  case  in  law, 
but  perhaps  he  can  get  something  out  of  a  jury,  therefore 
he  will  undertake  it.  This  is  the  unconscionable  lawyer's 
estimate  of  trial  by  jury.  If  a  lawyer  thinks  the  cause 
good  in  law  and  justice,  he  will  prefer  to  have  it  tried  by 
the  Judge.  Trial  by  jury  is  therefore  a  great  promoter  of 
litigation  and  of  unjust  and  oppressive  suits,  and  is  recog- 
nized by  all  parties  as  a  means  of  defeating  justice. 

Men  are  commanded  to  leave  their  vocations  to  come 
and  try  unjust  causes,  which  Avould  not  venture  to  come 
into  Court  at  all  but  for  this  gambling  on  the  chances  of 
the  jury's  going  wrong.  To  serve  these  ends  of  injustice^ 
and  to  serve  very  badly  any  end  of  justice,  a  lot  of  jurors 
must  be  summoned  at  the  public  expense.  That  part 
which  is  taxed  to  the  suitor  is  but  a  small  part  of  the  cost 
which  is  taxed  on  the  public.  The  people  know  not  the  end 
of  the  cost  of  juries,  Avhich  comes  upon  them  all  in  the 
general  sea  of  taxes.     Every  notice  and  every  summons 

18§ 


TRIAL  BY   JURY   A    DEFEAT  OF   JUSTICE.  189 

costs,  and  the  distance  to  the  juror's  residence  is  taxed  in 
the  officer's  mileage,  although  the  summoned  person  comes 
up  onl\'  to  be  challenged  or  excused.  When  at  last  the 
trial  begins  the  great  waste  of  time  and  expense  fairly  sets 
in.  The  aim  of  the  unjust  side  is  to  confound  right  and 
wrong  in  minds  of  the  jurors,  and  to  play  upon  any  preju- 
dice of  jurors,  whether  of  policital  party,  of  religion,  of 
race,  of  nationality,  of  social  position,  and  any  otiier 
element  which  may  turn  men's  minds  from  considerations 
of  justice  between  the  parties. 

Lawyers  do  this  professionally,  and  hold  that  they  would 
come  short  of  their  duty  to  clients  if  they  did  not  resort  to 
this  practice.  This  is  their  estimate  of  trial  by  jury.  The 
unjust  side  multiplies  witnesses  to  fetch  in  things  which 
have  no  relevancy  to  the  justice  of  the  case.  The  calcula- 
tion is  that  this  may  chance  to  fetch  in  some  testimony  or 
influence  that  will  prejudice  the]  mind  of  a  juror.  Thus 
the  attorney  summons  many  witnesses  to  testify  to  irrele- 
vant things,  whom  he  would  not  offer  at  all  if  the  case  were 
tried  before  a  Judge.  The  just  side  has  to  meet  these  tac- 
tics by  summoning  a  lot  of  witnesses  to  counteract  the 
other  lot  in  irrelevant  things.  Thus  the  case  that  should 
be  tried  at  one  sitting  is  spread  out  into  a  week  and  more, 
stopping  the  administration  of  justice  and  turning  its 
tribunals  to  institutions  of  injustice. 

In  all  this  lugging  in  of  irrelevant  testimony,  the  law- 
yer who  is  resisting  justice  makes  exceptions  to  the  rulings 
against  the  admission  of  the  testimony  which  he  offers,  and 
exceptions  to  the  rulings  which  admit  testimony  on  the 
other  side,  for  the  purpose  of  taking  an  appeal  on  points 
of  law,  in  order  to  get  a  new  trial  to  repeat  the  same 
gambling  on  the  chances  of  fooling  the  jury,  and  the  same 
imposition  on  the  Courts,  and  on  the  public.  Thus  is  the 
jury  trial  a  defeiit  of  the  administration  of  justice,  a  costly 


190  TRIAL   BY   JURY   A    DEFEAT   OF  JUSTICE. 

imposition  on  the  public,  and  tlie  great  bulwark  of  wrong. 
The  chief  practice  under  it  plainly  recognizes  it  as  a  mock- 
ery of  justice,  and  as  a  protection  of  the  strong  wrongdoer 
against  the  just  cause  of  the  weak.  It  has  the  respect  of 
neither  bench,  bar,  nor  people.  The  traditional  reverence 
for  it  is  even  m©re  senseless  than  the  worship  of  a  wooden 
imao'e  which  the  worshiper  has  fashioned,  for  that  at  least 
can  not  hurt  him,  while  this  is  a  monstrous  oppression. 

Trial  by  jury  trifles  with  justice  in  criminal  trials  in 
like  manner.  The  process  begins  with  an  indictment  by  a 
grand  jury.  This  seems  even  a  more  farcical  proceeding. 
A  person  caught  in  the  act  of  murder  or  robbery  or  steal- 
ing or  forgery,  has  to  be  indicted  by  a  grand  jury,  sum- 
moned at  great  cost.  A  rational  supposition  is,  that  if  an 
offender  is  caught,  and  the  offense  on  its  face  is  fit  to  go  to 
the  grand  jury,  the  going  there  is  unnecessary;  that,  in 
short,  any  offense  that  is  flagrant  enough  to  go  to  the  grand 
jury,  and,  upon  testimony  on  one  side  only,  to  be  reported 
for  prosecution,  is  flagrant  enough  to  be  prosecuted  upon 
complaint  or  information,  without  going  through  the  grand 
jury.  As  for  another  part  of  the  functions  assumed  by 
grand  juries,  namely,  the  making  inquest  in  the  commu- 
nity at  large  to  inquire  if  anybody  is  doing  that  for  which 
he  ought  to  be  indicted,  that  would  be  better  if  left  out 
altogether.     It  does  not  seem  to  belong  to  a  system  of  law. 

Through  this  costly  and  absurd  process  the  accused, 
perhaps  caught  in  the  act  of  an  atrocious  crime,  is  brought 
into  Court,  the  indictment  read,  his  plea  made,  and  then 
a  jury  has  to  be  impaneled,  to  which  he  has  several  per- 
emptory challenges,  and  unlimited  clmllenges  for  cause. 
To  have  formed  any  idea  of  the  crime  from  public  report 
is  generally  found  a  sufficient  cause  for  challenge.  As  all 
atrocious  crimes  are  given  notoriety  by  the  newspapers,  and 
by  public  rumor,  this  in  general  serves  to  disqualify  the  fairly 


TRIAL   BY  JURY   A   DEFEAT  OF  JUSTICE.  191 

intelligent  people  for  jurors  in  any  trial  for  flagrant  crime. 
Thus  is  the  cause  of  i)ublic  justice  degraded  to  the  most 
ignorant  and  irresponsible  element  of  the  community. 
The  trial  from  beginning  to  end  is  a  fight  against  justice, 
in  which  all  the  advantages  are  given  to  the  offender,  llis 
attorney  sprinkles  the  testimony  of  the  prosecution  all 
through  with  his  exceptions  to  its  admission,  and  he  then 
excepts  to  any  ruling  against  the  testimony  which  he  offers. 
This  is  to  find  some  technical  error  upon  which  he  can  get 
the  Supreme  Court  to  set  aside  the  verdict,  and  order 
another  trial,  to  repeat  the  same  game. 

He  multiplies  witnesses  to  testify  to  irrelevant  and  im- 
proper things,  to  confuse  and  prejudice  the  minds  of  the 
jurors.  As  any  one  of  twelve  can  prevent  a  verdict,  he  has 
twelve  chances  to  play  upon  men  who  can  not  be  expected 
to  be  of  high  intelligence,  »or  of  any  expertness  in  sifting 
and  weighing  testimony.  If  there  be  among  the  twelve 
even  one  who  is  susceptible  to  prejudice  of  race,  religion, 
nationality,  political  party,  secret  order,  or  any  other,  he 
brings  all  his  ingenuity  i»  play  upon  this.  The  Judge  has 
to  rule  off-hand  on  his  many  objections  to  testimony,  and 
in  this  he  has  the  chance  that  out  of  all  the  rulings  he  may 
find  one  that  is  erroneous.  And  as  the  Supreme  Court 
may  not  take  upon  itself  to  judge  how  much  may  have 
hung  upon  this  error,  it  rules  largely  in  sending  back  the 
case  to  be  tried  over  again,  with  all  the  enormous  cost  to 
the  people,  and  with  all  the  chances  of  playing  the  same 
game  over  again. 

When  this  appeal  on  error  of  law  is  taken  to  the  Supreme 
Court — to  which,  in  criminal  cases,  it  goes  directly,  with- 
out stopping  at  the  District  Court — a  record  of  the  multi- 
farious testimony  has  to  be  sent  with  it,  and  this  has  to  be 
examined  by  the  Supreme  Court,  and,  in  the  present 
practice  of  that  Court,  has  to  be  road  to  or  by  all  the 


193  TRIAL  BY  JURY  A  DEFEAT  OF  JUSTICE. 

Judges.  As  miicli  as  half  the  time  of  the  Supreme  Court 
is  taken  up  in  examining  the  records  of  testimony  in 
criminal  trials,  upon  questions  of  error  which  are  raised  in 
the  attempts  to  defeat  justice  by  confusing  the  minds  of 
jurors,  and  which  would  hav^e  no  existence  if  the  eause 
were  tried  hy  the  Bench.  Nor  is  this  the  end  of  the 
objections  upon  which  to  procure  a  new  trial.  They  go 
back  to  the  grand  jury.  Altliough  the  accused  may  have 
been  caught  in  the  act  of  crime,  yet,  after  the  verdict  is 
rendered,  if  he  can  discover  any  technical  irregularity  in  a 
grand  juror,  such  as  a  residence  just  over  the  county  line, 
or  a  defect  of  naturalization,  or  any  other  technical  dis- 
qualification, he  can  get  the  verdict  set  aside,  and  a  new  trial 
ordered. 

The  fact  that  he  has  pleaded  to  the  indictment  without 
exception  does  not  bar  him  from  going  back  to  search  for 
a  flaw  in  the  grand  jury.  He  has  also  the  same  chances 
with  the  petit  jury,  together  with  the  allegation  that 
improper  considerations  entered  into  their  verdict,  as  dis- 
closed by  the  babbling  of  some  of  their  number.  Thus 
does  the  imposture  of  criminal  trial  by  jury  clog  all  the 
Courts,  and  make  the  Supreme  Court  unable  to  administer 
in  the  civil  suits,  which  also  are  spread  out  in  the  same 
impracticable  way.  Thus  it  comes  that  to  look  rationally 
into  our  judiciary  with  the  view  of  reform,  leads  to  the 
conviction  that  nothing  short  of  a  revolution  from  bottom 
to  top  can  be  a  real  reform.  The  conclusion  of  this 
examination  of  the  jury  system  is  that  justice  should  be 
administered  by  the  intelligent,  not  by  the  ignorant;  that 
from  Justices  of  the  Peace  to  the  Supreme  Court  it  should 
be  administered  by  lawyers,  chosen  from  members  of 
highest  standing  at  the  bar,  in  such  a  way  as  to  make 
the  judiciary  independent  of  those  to  whom  it  administers 
justice. 


XLII. 
WOMEX  AND  MATERNITY. 

TO  ASSAULT  women  bodily  is  not  generally  thonglit  a 
brave  act.  Why  should  it  be  thought  brave  to  assault 
them  in  public  speech?  To  use  advantages  of  intellect 
and  opportunity  to  make  an  onslaught  on  defenseless 
women  is  no  more  manly  than  to  go  at  them  with  the  fists. 
Yet  the  public  writer,  the  bully  preacher,  and  the  sham 
reformer  can  always  make  their  mark  by  a  general  denun- 
ciation of  the  sins  of  women.  The  Rev.  Dr.  Morgan  Dix 
has  lately  taken  a  turn  at  this  easy  sensationalism  by  a 
Lenten  sermon  on  the  degeneracy  of  the  women  of  society, 
in  which  he  has  done  the  customary  act  of  justice  by 
describing  the  worst  sjjecimens,  and  classing  all  as  such. 

With  much  wholesale  specification  he  comes  to  this  gen- 
eral conclusion:  "Thus  is  the  ideal  of  an  earnest,  modest, 
simple  womanhood  brouglit  into  contempt  and  replaced  by 
a  poor  substitute  made  of  vulgarity,  heartlessness,  froth 
and  flash.  All  this  prepares  the  way  for  false,  selfish  and 
profane  conceptions  of  marriage,  and  girls  arc  thus  trained 
downward  to  low,  coarse,  and  even  vicious  ideals  of  the 
holy  state  of  marriage."  That  the  reverend  bully  drew 
this  picture  of  the  girls  of  society  from  his  own  conscious- 
ness, makes  him  all  the  better  in  his  own  estimation.  For 
if  the  goodness  which  is  made  by  lamentations  of  the 
general  wickedness  were  cut  oif,  the  stock  of  betterments 
left  to  give  thanks  for  would  be  small.  His  chief  speci- 
fication against  society  women  is  that  they  do  not  exercise 
the  maternal  function  enough — do  not  have  large  families. 

Women  have  been  much  assaulted  with  this  accusation 
13  193 


194  WOMEK  AND  MATEKlflTY. 

from  the  pulpit  and  in  the  newsjiapers.  In  addition  to 
their  general  defenselessness  against  public  denunciation, 
the  delicacy  of  this  subject  further  disables  them  from 
vindication;  but  delicacy  ought  not  to  prevent  a  defense 
against  an  accusation  which  is  preached  from  the  pulpit. 
The  reverend  Doctor  holds  that  women  who  do  not  keep 
on  having  children  through  the  period  of  child-bearing  are 
guilty  of  a  great  crime.  If  this  is  not  the  effect,  where 
would  he  draw  the  line,  and  at  what  number  would  he  say 
that  the  crime  of  avoidance  is  tolerable? 

The  child-bearing  capabilities  and  fortunes  vary  so 
widely  in  the  natural  way,  and  through  the  living,  education 
and  occupation,  that  a  preacher  can  not  justly  assume 
anything  as  to  the  wife's  methods  because  of  fewness  of 
offspring.  He  pronounces  savage  judgment  without 
grounds.  To  pronounce  this  sentence  on  women  in  general 
is  all  the  more  unjustifiable.  If  he  believes  that  such 
criminal  practices  are  used  by  any  member  of  his  flock, 
his  duty  is  to  deal  with  it  individually,  instead  of  delivering 
a  general  accusation.  If  the  reasonable  limitation  is  by 
continence,  is  not  this  self-denial  more  virtuous  than  to 
force  children  into  being  for  mere  selfish  indulgence? 

To  come  down  to  the  marrow-bones  of  the  matter,  is 
child-bearing  a  duty?  In  this  the  reverend  Doctor  seems 
to  be  like  those  told  of  in  the  Scripture,  who  lay  on  others 
burdens  grievous  to  be  borne,  while  themselves  will  not 
touch  them  even  with  their  little  fingers.  There  is  a  wide 
disparity  in  the  parts  borne  by  man  and  wife  in  child- 
bearing  Wherein  is  there  any  duty  in  maternity,  that 
women  may  not  avoid  it  if  they  please?  Such  injunctions 
as  the  Scripture  has,  to  increase  and  multiply  and  re- 
plenish the  land,  were  when  it  needed  peopling  and  re- 
plenishing, or  were  given  to  a  particular  family,  of  whom 
it  was  designed  to  make  a  chosen  race.  They  have  no  ap- 
plication to  the  world  or  to  people  as  they  now  are. 


WOMEH   AND  MATERNITY.  195 

PeoiDle  are  too  many.  All  the  social  evils  multiply  with 
the  increase  of  population.  Ileckless  propagation  is  the 
obstacle  to  all  the  2>lans  of  human  philosophers  for  improv- 
ing the  condition  of  mankind.  Each  of  them  comes  at 
last  to  the  conclusion  that  the  social  evils  are  incnrahlc 
without  restriction  on  procreation,  and  that  to  beget  chil- 
dren to  poverty  is  immoral.  Good  people  condemn  tlie  pan  ■ 
per  and  the  indolent  drunkard  who  go  on  begetting  chil- 
dren, yet  Dr.  Dix's  rule  would  make  this  reckless  act  their 
saving  grace.  All  hold  that  to  increase  the  family  beyond 
the  ability  to  provide,  is  recklessly  selfish;  but  a  provision 
for  children  born  and  educated  in  wealth,  must  be  accord- 
ing, and  thus  they  are  under  a  limitation  the  same  as  the 
poor. 

To  create  a  life  for  tliis  world,  and  an  immortal  soul 
for  that  which  comes  next,  is  a  serious  business.  If  Dr. 
Dix  should  forecast  the  destiny  of  the  born,  it  would  be  a 
life  of  labor,  care,  and  much  affliction,  and  a  very  large 
preponderance  of  chances  for  worse  in  the  hereafter.  Wlien 
he  considers  the  battle  of  life  here,  and  the  chances  beyond, 
can  he  think  there  is  a  duty  to  force  beings  into  such  a 
destiny?  What  can  be  so  immoral  and  so  lacking  in  con- 
science as  to  fetch  children  into  these  tremendous  liabili- 
ties, for  a  momentary  gratification?  Our  pretense  of  a 
government  by  consent  of  the  governed,  is  a  cruel  mockery 
when  we  thrust  beings  into  the  world  without  their  con- 
sent. The  time  may  come  when  the  lost  child  shall 
arraign  the  reckless  parents  before  a  dread  tribunal,  and 
say,  "  Thus  didst  thou !  " 

So  far  as  Dr.  Dix  can  know,  the  limited  amount  of 
breeding  done  by  the  women  of  fashionable  society  is  by  the 
practice  of  self-denial;  therefore  he  is  bound  in  justice  —  to 
say  nothing  of  Christian  charity  —  to  supjiose  that  it  is  so, 
and  to  exalt  them  therefor.    Perhaps  women  have  a  higher 


196  WOMEiq^  AND   MATERlflTY. 

idea  for  their  lives  than  he  has  for  them.  They  may  think 
that  they  can  do  better  by  improving  their  minds,  and  by 
serving  the  cause  of  humanity,  than  by  giving  themselves 
ujj  to  the  increasing  of  the  surplus  population.  A  limita- 
tion of  the  maternal  function  may  allow  time  for  such  cul- 
ture as  will  give  higher  training  to  the  fewer  children, 
and  will  supply  an  intellectual  tonic  to  the  man  in  his  own 
house- 
Numbers  are  of  no  account  in  mankind;  it  is  elevation 
that  counts  in  benefiting  the  race.  One  superior  mind, 
body  and  character  is  better  for  the  world  than  any  num- 
ber of  the  low.  She  who  resigns  herself  to  the  function  of 
maternity  during  all  the  natural  period,  can  not  have  that 
mental  exercise  which  is  requisite  to  keep  up  with  the 
minds  of  her  grown  up  children,  if  they  get  education, 
nor  even  with  tlie  growing  intelligence  of  the  man.  Be- 
sides, the  mother,  at  each  birth,  becomes  herself  like  a 
little  child,  and  her  speech  and  mind  come  down  to  the 
germs  and  slow  development  of  the  infant  understanding. 
This  repeated  going  back  to  the  beginning  of  mind  and 
speech  keeps  her  from  intellectual  development. 

Therefore,  is  it  customary  to  say  of  a  wife  who  has 
been  faithful  in  the  maternal  service,  that  the  man  has 
developed  while  she  has  stood  still,  and  thus  they  have 
become  intellectually  incomj)atible,  and  he  has  to  go  astray 
for  mental  companionship. 

There  is  a  bad  habit  in  preachers  of  assuming  a  prev- 
alence of  sins  of  which  they  know  nothing.  Dr.  Dix 
can  know  nothing  of  that  which  he  denounces  as  a  com- 
mon practice;  or  if  he  does  know,  he  has  the  pastoral  duty 
to  deal  with  it  individually.  No  one  has  the  right  to  sup- 
pose that  woman's  avoidance  of  an  undesired  number  of 
children  is  by  any  other  method  than  self-denial.  This  is 
greatly  to  their  credit.     There  is  no  call  for  the  multipli- 


WOME^r   AND   MATERNITY.  197 

cation  of  the  species,  and  no  obligation  of  duty.  And 
when  the  temporal  and  the  everlasting  consequences  of  the 
creation  of  a  life  are  taken  into  the  account,  conscientious 
men  and  women  will  call  up  the  sober  second  tliouglit 
before  they  take  upon  themselves  this  dreadful  responsi- 
bility. 


XLIII. 
FISHING  AND  MOKALS. 

A  SUNDAY  bill  in  the  General  Assembly  of  New 
York,  which,  among  other  sports,  forbids  fishing, 
has  aroused  newspaper  discussion,  in  which  some  main- 
tain the  innocence  of  fishing  on  Sunday,  and  some  make 
the  customary  appeal  to  the  literature  which  praises  this 
"  gentle  art,"  and  some  cast  reflections  on  that  piety  which 
is  carried  to  the  skies  on  flowery  beds  of  ease,  and 
which  has  the  command  of  its  own  time  and  sports  on 
week  days,  and,  therefore,  has  no  appetite  on  Sundays  for 
the  things  it  forbids  to  the  toilers.  This  agitation,  and 
the  prominence  given  to  fishing  as  the  favorite  recreation 
of  our  President,  call  for  a  deeper  discussion  of  its  nature, 
and  of  its  claims  of  bodily,  intellectual  and  moral  benefit. 
The  sedentary  form  of  most  of  this  fishing  gives  away 
any  merit  of  active  exercise  of  the  body  as  a  relief  from 
sedentary  pursuits,  and  limits  its  claims  to  the  intellectual 
and  moral  influence.  The  pretense  of  general  contem- 
plation and  philosophical  thought  is  idle,  and,  what  is  more, 
is  untrue,  for  the  fixity  of  the  mind  on  the  object  of  getting 
a  bite,  limits  thought  to  that  and  a  very  narrow  circle 
thereabout.  The  effect  is  mental  vacuity.  This  pretext 
is  itself  a  sign  of  the  immoral  influence  of  this  art.  The 
object  is  to  delude  the  fish  to  his  death  by  a  bait  in  the 
semblance  of  his  natural  food,  on  a  fatal  hook.  The  mind 
of  the  fisher  is  bent  on  this  stratagem  to  deceive  an  inno- 
cent being  to  his  undoing. 

>       This  is  his  intellectual  and  moral  occupation  for  hours 
at  a  stretch,  and  often  from  day  to  day.     Every  well-trained 

198 


FISDIKG  AND   MORALS.  199 

child  has  often  heard  from  his  motlier  tlic  maxim  that 
deceiving  is  lying.  Arc  not  all  the  ideas  of  moral  training 
belied  if  this  bent  of  the  mind  on  dece2)tion  can  go  on 
from  hour  to  hour  and  day  to  day,  and  can  become  the 
favorite  recreation  for  a  season  from  year  to  year,  without 
effect  on  the  character?  Must  not  this  effect  of  applying 
the  mind  to  the  work  of  treachery  be  intensified  l)y  the 
cool  blood  and  deliberation  in  which  it  is  done?  In  tliis 
is  none  of  the  excitement  of  the  resistance  of  the  victim, 
or  of  the  chase,  or  of  danger,  as  in  the  hunting  of  some 
wild  beast;  it  is  all  to  tempt  and  beguile  an  innocent, 
unresisting  thing  to  its  death. 

Said  Hamlet:  "  They  do  but  jest;  poison  in  jest."  So 
the  fisher  cheats  and  kills  for  sport.  To  say  that  this 
practice  of  deluding  beings  to  death,  by  false  pretenses,  for 
physical,  mental  and  moral  recreation,  has  no  effect  on  the 
character,  is  to  deny  all  the  accepted  principles  of  moral 
training.  A  very  serious  part  is  its  hereditary  consequences. 
Darwiii's  evolution  of  morals,  and  the  practical  rules  of 
breeders  of  domestic  animals,  alike,  testify  to  this  moral 
heredity  as  the  order  of  nature.  The  training  of  the 
pointer  dog  becomes  hereditary.  Can  it  be  that  the  prac- 
tice of  deceit  by  men  until  it  becomes  an  addiction,  will 
not  transmit  a  deceitful  nature  to  the  child?  Surely  man 
is  not  less  than  a  dog. 

"  The  fathers  have  eaten  sour  grapes  and  the  children's 
teeth  are  set  on  edge,"  was  the  strong  metaphor  by  which 
the  guileless  Israelites  affirmed  the  law  of  moral  heredity. 
If  we  are  not  infidels,  must  we  not  believe  that  multitudes 
of  little  girls,  with  little  curls,  and  with  that  moral  polar- 
ity which  Rev.  Dix  says  is  in  every  woman,  by  wliicli  she 
must  be  either  very  good  or  very  bad,  have  been  whipped 
for  lying  in  consequence  of  their  father's  fishing  excursion 
when  they  were  alike  unknowing  and  unknown;'  Tlie  Ohio 


200  FISHING   AND   MOliALS. 

Senate,  which  has  passed  a  bill  to  inquire  into  the  convict's 
childhood  and  moral  training,  for  remitting  the  penalty, 
should  look  to  this,  and  put  into  its  catechism  the  question 
whether  his  father  ever  went  fishing.  Of  all  the  sad  list  of 
temjitings,  deceivings,  desertions  and  breaches  of  promise 
to  women,  how  many  must  have  been  consequent,  either 
immediately  or  by  heredity,  upon  addiction  to  fishing? 

The  progressive  force  of  habit  has  been  strongly  set 
forth  by  De  Quincey,  whereby  a  man  who  is  in  the  habitual 
practice  of  murder  may,  in  the  course  of  moral  degeneracy, 
come  to  be  a  procrastinator.  In  a  man  addicted  to  fishing, 
for  mental  recreation,  we  may  look  for  the  practice  of 
temptation,  finesse,  intrigue  and  stratagem  on  his  fellow- 
men,  and  also  on  his  fellow- women;  for  an  instinctive  pro- 
pensity to  catch  the  innocent  unawares;  for  a  thinking  that 
gain  by  deception  is  an  intellectual  achievement;  for  what- 
ever may  be  expected  to  come  from  a  course  of  moral 
degeneracy  thus  broadly  entered  upon.  This  is  not  theory; 
it  is  moral  science,  established  by  all  human  experience, 
and  made  the  foundation  of  our  moral  education. 

In  a  President  addicted  to  this  pleasure  of  duping  the 
innocent,  moral  science  compels  us  to  look  for  a  want  of 
faith  in  fellow-man  and  in  straight  methods;  for  an  idea 
that  politics  are  a  game;  for  a  nature  that  delights  in  keep- 
ing appointments  on  the  hook,  to  tantalize  applicants, 
while  their  hearts  sicken  with  deferred  hope  and  their 
hardly  scraped  up  money  is  spent  on  Washington  hotels; 
for  a  hesitancy  in  intrusting  authority;  for  belief  in  luck 
rather  than  in  the  wisdom  of  the  people;  for  an  insensible 
but  inevitable  tendency  to  turn  the  whole  administration, 
in  the  present  and  in  foreordaining  the  future,  into  the 
practices  of  baiting  and  angling. 

If  the  practice  of  truthfulness  and  honest  dealing  form 
character,  the  practice  of  deceit  and  treachery  must  form 


FISHING   AND  MORALS.  201 

a  reverse  cliaracter.  If  moral  qualities  are  transmitted 
with  the  physical,  this  addiction  of  the  male  parent  to  the 
practice  of  deceiving  the  unsuspecting,  can  not  beget  sons 
with  little  hatchets  and  the  inability  to  tell  a  lie.  If 
straightforwardness,  free  expression  and  open  conflict 
foster  courage,  the  practice  of  lying  in  wait  for  the  inno- 
cent must  foster  the  opposite.  The  question  of  fishing  on 
Sunday  is  morally  a  small  matter  in  view  of  the  moral  inilu- 
ence  of  all  fishing  for  sport. 


XLiy. 

THE  CASE  AGAINST  WOMAN-A  REHEAR- 
ING. 

WOMAN'S  aspiration  to  a  higher  life  is  continually 
confounded  by  man's  throwing  in  her  face  that  the 
Avoman's  fault  brought  all  the  trouble  into  the  world.  From 
the  high  Doctor  of  Divinity  who  improves  the  Lenten  season 
by  a  series  of  sermons  to  give  a  setback  to  the  rising  spirit 
of  woman  by  reminding  her  of  her  sentence  of  penal  servi- 
tude, and  accusing  her  of  shirking  the  pronounced  curse 
of  maternity,  to  the  low  boor  who  lives  upon  his  wife's 
wages,  she  hears  the  same  old  croak  that  this  is  a  wicked 
world,  and  that  she  is  the  cause. 

Whether  she  seeks  amelioration  of  the  unequal  con- 
ditions of  marriage,  or  property  rights,  or  a  right  to  her 
own  earnings,  or  social  and  political  equality,  or  whatever 
else  belongs  to  freedom,  she  encounters  the  same  old  fling 
that  she  once  had  her  own  head  and  made  a  mess  of  it,  and 
that  what  she  did  plunged  a  perfect  and  happy  world  into 
wickedness  and  misery,  and  that  all  her  attempts  at  eleva- 
tion are  a  revolt  against  her  just  sentence. 

Is  it  not  time  for  women  to  revolt  at  this,  so  far  at  least 
as  to  examine  the  scripture  authority  for  it?  Must  her 
aspiration  to  be  free  be  forever  crushed  by  the  utterance 
of  her  final  condemnation,  without  looking  into  its  founda- 
tion? They  of  whom  Jesus  said,  **^Ye  have  made  the 
word  of  God  of  none  effect  by  your  tradition,"  were  very 
religious  and  exceedingly  strenuous  for  the  law.  Did  the 
custom  of  fixing  upon  the  Word  of  God  a  gloss  which 
perverts  it  cease  with  the  Church  of  Judea? 

Going  to  the  fountain  head,  and  taking  the  Bible  in  its 
203 


THE  CASE  AGAINST   WOMAN — A   IlEHEAUING.        203 

literal  ])urity,  let  it  be  asked,  "What  was  the  woman's  fault? 
It  was  this:  Against  the  prohibition  she  ate  of  the  fruit  of 
the  tree  of  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  and  gave  it  to  the 
man,  and  he  did  eat.  This  was  the  whole  of  her  sin.  If 
a  sin,  it  was  the  sin  of  both.  The  man  did  it  with  more 
deliberation.  Just  penalty  would  be  as  heavy  on  him. 
To  plead  that  the  woman  led  him  into  it  is  childish  and 
unmanly  to  the  last  degree.  Such  a  plea  would  not  be 
received  in  a  court  of  justice.  And  for  him  to  magnify 
the  greater  penalty  on  her,  and  to  assert  her  subjection  to 
him  because  of  the  mutual  fault,  is  to  reward  himself  for 
his  own  sin  by  enslaving  her. 

What  was  the  effect  upon  them  of  their  eating  the  for- 
bidden fruit?    Let  the  Scripture  tell: 

''And  the  eyes  of  both  of  them  were  opened.  And 
the  Lord  God  said,  Behold  the  man  is  become  as  one  of  us, 
to  know  good  and  evil.  And  now  lest  he  put  forth  his 
hand  and  take  also  of  the  tree  of  life  and  live  forever, 
therefore  the  Lord  God  sent  him  forth  from  the  Garden  of 
Eden." 

It  was  truly  the  tree  of  knowledge  to  them.  Their 
eyes  were  opened;  that  is,  they  had  become  enlightened. 
They  had  acquired  knowledge  like  unto  the  gods.  There- 
fore they  were  sent  out  fi'om  the  garden  where  the  tree  of 
life  grew.  Not  because  they  were  ignorant,  depraved, 
wicked,  or  in  any  way  unfit  to  live  in  the  garden,  but 
because  they  were  enlightened  as  the  gods,  and  might  seize 
the  tree  of  life  and  become  immortal  as  the  gods. 

Where  in  this  did  that  universal  evil  come  in,  which  the 
woman  is  accused  of?  The  Bible  history  has  no  account 
of  it.  Was  it  in  being  sent  out  of  the  garden?  That 
garden  was  not  for  the  human  race.  To  that  He  gave  the 
whole  earth.  He  said  to  the  first  pair:  "  Be  fruitful,  and 
multiply,  and  replenish  the  earth,  and  subdue  it.   and 


204       THE  CASE  AGAINST   WOMAN — A  REHEARING. 

have  dominion  over  every  living  thing  that  moveth  upon 
the  earth."  The  garden  was  solely  for  the  use  of  *' the 
Lord  God/*  for  His  own  recreation.  He  planted  it,  and 
put  the  man  in  it  to  keep  it  in  order.  The  Scripture  says: 
"And  the  Lord  God  took  the  man  and  put  him  into  the 
Garden  of  Eden,  to  dress  it  and  to  keep  it."  His  *' cus- 
tom always  of  the  afternoon"  is  told  in  the  account  of 
their  seeking  cover  when  enlightenment  had  made  them 
ashamed  for  their  nakedness.  ^'And  they  heard  the  voice 
of  the  Lord  God  walking  in  the  garden  in  the  cool  of  the 
day." 

The  garden  was  reserved  and  planted  by  the  Lord  God 
for  his  own  delectation,  and  the  first  man's  office  of 
garden-keeper  was  exceptional.  The  whole  earth  had 
been  created  for  mankind.  Therefore  the  exclusion  of  the 
pair  from  the  garden  was  no  judgment  upon  the  race. 

Still  sticking  to  the  straight  way,  brushing  aside  super- 
stitious tradition,  and  taking  the  Scripture  in  literal 
purity,  let  this  rehearing  proceed  to  ask  what  was  the 
consequence  of  the  enlightening  act.     This  to  the  woman: 

"I  will  greatly  multiply  thy  sorrow  and  thy  conception; 
in  sorrow  shalt  thou  bring  forth  children,  and  thy  desire 
shall  be  to  thy  husband  [or  ''subject  to  thy  husband"], 
and  he  shall  rule  over  thee." 

4-nd  this  to  the  man : 

''Cursed  is  the  ground  for  thy  sake;  in  sorrow  shalt 
thou  eat  of  it  all  the  days  of  thy  life;  thorns  and  thistles 
shall  it  bring  forth  to  thee;  and  thou  shalt  eat  the  herb  of 
the  field;  in  the  sweat  of  thy  face  shalt  thou  eat  bread  till 
thou  return  unto  the  ground." 

This  is  all  of  it.  If  it  pronounced  a  heavier  penalty 
upon  women  for  the  equal  fault,  it  is  not  for  man  to  cast 
it  at  her.  If  it  declared  that  "he  shall  rule  over  thee," 
it  is  not  for  him  to  assert  for  their  equal  sin,  nor  to  accuse 


THE   CASE   AGAINST  WOMAK — A   REHEARING.       205 

her  of  bringing  evil  upon  them,  to  give  him  the  right  to 
take  it  out  of  her. 

AVhere  in  all  this  is  that  plunge  into  misery  which  the 
woman  is  accused  of  giving  the  world?  The  blessed  earth 
yields  her  bounties  to  man.  His  bread  is  sweetened  by 
the  sweat  of  his  face.  The  nobility  and  moral  virtue  of 
labor  is  sounded  in  all  the  land.  Witliout  labor,  and  liv- 
ing on  the  spontaneous  fruits,  he  sinks  to  a  stupid  brute. 
Conception  is  a  blessing  which  woman  would  not  part 
with,  and  is  not  multiplied  beyond  control.  Each  bring- 
ing forth  is  not  in  sorrow,  but  in  rejoicing  and  gratitude. 
Babies  are  the  joy  of  the  household,  and  maternity  is  the 
spring  of  perpetual  youth  to  the  family  and  the  race.  In 
all  this  did  woman  bring  no  curse  upon  herself.  And 
even  if  she  had,  it  would  be  nothing  for  man  to  fling 
up  at  her. 

Human  tradition  has  foisted  fable  upon  this  plain  his- 
tory. It  charges  that  the  woman's  eating  brought  sin  into 
the  world.  As  if  sin  were  an  exterior  being;  or  as  if  prior 
to  this  enlightenment  they  knew  not  enough  to  sin.  But 
this  ignores  the  word  of  the  Lord  God,  who  said:  ''Be- 
hold, the  man  has  become  as  one  of  us  to  know  good  and 
evil."  Was  this  sin?  And  sin  is  the  doing.  It  is  from 
within,  not  from  an  exterior  being. 

But  the  human  tradition  alleges  that  by  this  sin  death 
came  into  the  woi'ld.  Is  it  physical  death?  That  was  the 
condition  of  man's  creation  when  the  Creator  blessed  the 
pair,  and  said  "Be  fruitful  and  multiply,"  Without 
death,  birth  could  not  be.  If  all  that  have  been  born  had 
lived,  they  would  now  be  standing  on  each  other's  heads 
all  over  the  earth.  They  would  be  crawling  upon  and 
feeding  upon  one  another  like  a  mass  of  vermin.  The 
mind  can  not  have  the  smallest  conception  of  the  horrible 
state  of  the  human  race  if  procreation  went  on  without 


306       THE  CASE  AGAINST  WOMAN— A  REHEARING. 

dissolution.  '^  Dust  tliou  art,  and  unto  dust  slialt  thou 
return,"  was  the  condition  of  man's  creation,  and  death 
and  birth  are  mutual  parts  of  the  immortality  of  man. 

Is  it  moral  death?  Where  in  the  Scripture's  history 
of  this  affair  is  any  ground  for  such  a  theory?  It  is  bet- 
ter to  stick  to  the  Bible.  The  Lord  God  tells  the  moral 
effect  of  the  eating  of  the  forbidden  fruit.  Their  eyes 
were  opened.  They  were  enlightened  by  knowledge.  Is 
that  depraving?  If  so  it  reaches  to  the  throne  of  heaven. 
This  is  the  word:  ''Behold,  the  man  has  become  as  one  of 
us,  to  know  good  and  evil."  Is  that  moral  death?  On 
the  contrary,  it  lifted  the  man  from  a  mindless  being 
to  a  being  of  godlike  knowledge.  If  this  was  Avoman's 
work,  then  she  brought  into  the  world  all  the  thinking 
faculties  which  lift  man  above  the  other  animals,  and 
which  inspire  him  to  seek  higher  knowledge  and  to  soar 
into  the  unknowable  in  pursuit  of  the  tree  of  life. 

A  gross  superstition  has  degraded  this  history  into  a 
notion  that  the  woman  was  tempted  by  a  talking  snake, 
which  stood  upon  the  tip  of  its  tail.  It  has  mixed  up  this 
with  another  superstition  of  the  fascinating  power  of 
snakes.  Painters  have  materialized  this  gross  supersti- 
tion by  a  picture  of  the  snake  with  head  resting  on  the 
crotch  of  the  tree  of  knowledge,  talking  to  the  woman; 
by  others,  of  the  snake  standing  on  the  tip  of  its  tail 
weaving  up  and  down  in  coils  to  display  its  brilliant  colors 
before  the  woman,  to  convey  that  her  childish  and  ignor- 
ant senses  were  captivated  by  the  snake's  pretty  stripes. 

This  superstition  is  as  gross  as  the  African  voudooism, 
and  like  that  it  makes  the  snake  its  chief  person.  Is  it 
not  wonderful  that  religious  people  let  it  be  taught  to 
childhood?  Is  it  not  strange  tliat  clergymen,  who  take 
up  collections  to  send  preachers  to  the  heathen,  do  not  lift 
up  their  horn  to  denounce  this  lowest  heathenism?    Alike 


THE  CASE  AGAINST  WOMAN— A  REHEARING.       207 

gross  is  the  snaky  superstition  that,  in  order  to  captivate 
the  woman's  senses,  Satan — once  aliigli  prince  of  heaven,  a 
being  formed  in  the  image  of  CJod — laid  oil'  liis  celestial 
form  and  took  the  shape  of  a  snake.  The  snakiness  of 
the  religions  of  the  lowest  savages  has  been  engrafted  on 
the  Bible  to  degrade  woman. 

Snakeology  has  been  made  theology.  It  has  so  cor- 
rupted the  Word  of  God  that  preachers  are  afraid  to  touch 
this  history.  The  plain  Bible  narrative  has  neither  Satan 
nor  snake  in  this  affair.  The  Serpent's  knowledge  proves 
him  a  higher  being  than  man.  The  analogies  of  creation 
prove  to  him  a  form  according.  The  statement  that  ''the 
Serpent  was  more  subtile  (wise)  than  any  beast  of  the  field 
which  the  Lord  God  had  made  "  proves  him  of  a  different 
order  from  the  beasts.  Probably  he  was  pre-existing.  He 
knew  the  tree  of  knowledge  and  its  effects,  which  man 
knew  not.  The  sentence  plainly  transformed  him  to  a 
snake,  and  this  was  the  end  of  the  Serpent  and  of  all  his 
wisdom. 

If  the  Serpent  had  been  Satan  or  the  devil — which 
some  ignorantly  think  identical  with  Satan — then  the 
sentence  would  have  left  no  more  Satan  or  devil  except  in 
the  snakes. 

The  plain  Scripture  narrative  tells  that  the  woman's 
aspiration  for  knowledge  led  her  to  eat.  Said  the  Ser- 
pent: "God  doth  know  that  in  the  day  tluit  ye  cat 
thereof  your  eyes  shall  be  opened,  and  ye  shall  be  as  gods, 
knowing  good  and  evil."  Her  desire  for  a  higher  life  was 
aroused.  Her  latent  mind  was  stirred.  Says  the  Scrip- 
ture: ''And  when  the  woman  saw  that  the  tree  was  good 
for  food,  and  that  it  was  pleasant  to  the  eyes,  and  a  tree  to 
be  desired  to  make  one  wise,  she  did  eat,  and  gave  also  to 
her  husband  with  her,  and  he  did  eat." 

The  custom  is  for  man  to  seal  the  condemnation  of 


208       THE  CASE  AGAINST  WOMAK — A  REHEARIITG. 

woman,'  and  let  himself  out  of  it,  as  did  the  Rev.  Dr.  Dix 
in  his  series  of  Lenten  discourses  on  women,  by  citing  the 
words  of  Saul  of  Tarsus  in  his  first  letter  to  Timothy,  in 
giving  a  reason  for  keeping  her  under  : 

"  Let  the  woman  learn  in  silence  with  all  subjection. 
But  I  suffer  not  a  woman  to  teach,  nor  to  usurp  authority 
over  the  man,  but  to  be  in  silence.  For  Adam  was  first 
formed,  then  Eve;  and  Adam  was  not  in  the  transgression, 
but  the  woman  being  deceived  was  in  the  transgression. 
Notwithstanding  she  shall  be  saved  in  child-bearing,  if 
they  continue  in  faith  and  charity  and  holiness  with 
sobriety.  ^^ 

Paul  gave  this  version  of  the  creation  and  of  the  dis- 
obedience as  the  reason  for  the  heavy  disabilities  he  pro- 
nounced on  woman.  These  have  weighed  heavily  on  her, 
but  they  are  not  now  accepted  as  the  Word  of  God.  Paul 
thought  woman  a  mistake  in  creation.  He  thought  it 
better  for  men  not  to  marry.  He  made  a  concession  of 
marriage  for  a  reason  which  debases  it,  and  which  few  will 
plead  in  their  own  behalf.  If  his  views  of  woman  and  the 
relations  of  the  sexes  be  taken,  they  must  be  taken  in  the 
whole.  He  has  furnished  a  way  to  let  the  people  out  by 
allowing  that,  as  to  marriage,  he  did  not  assume  to  speak 
by  the  Spirit.  This  permits  its  extension  to  all  his  utter- 
ances on  woman.  All  women  have  discerned  that  his 
words  on  them  were  not  from  the  Spirit. 

If  the  above  be  received,  the  man  was  not  in  the  trans- 
gression. This  would  take  out  Adam's  fall,  and  the  com- 
forting doctrine  that  mankind  inherited  through  that  a 
nature  incapable  of  any  good  act.  But  the  Lord  God 
sentenced  Adam  in  the  transgression.  If  not  being  de- 
ceived he  transgressed,  it  was  an  aggravation,  as  her  being 
deceived  a  palliation.  Paul  makes  the  sin  not  in  the  dis- 
obedience^ but  in  being  deceived.      But  the  Word  of  God 


THE   CASE   AGAIXST  WOMAX — A    REHEAEING.        209 

stands,  and  it  is  higher  than  the  word  of  Paul.  And  in  fact 
neither  was  deceived  by  the  Serpent.  Tliey  gained  the 
knowledge  which  he  said  would  come  by  the  eating,  and 
they  did  not  die  thereby. 

As  to  the  concession  that  if  she  is  very  good  she  shall 
be  saved  in  child-bearing,  it  appears  to  be  above  Paul's 
jurisdiction;  for  holiness  shows  no  influence  on  this  act. 

Priority  of  creation  is  not  higher  rank.  If  it  were,  the 
beasts  would  rank  above  man.  The  order  of  creation  was 
from  lower  to  higher.  In  this  order  the  woman  would  be 
a  higher  creation.  The  fact  of  her  subsequent  creation 
can  not  be  made  a  reason  for  her  subjection  to  the  man. 
It  is  not  received  by  the  religious  world  as  a  reason  for 
forbidding  her  to  teach,  nor  for  any  of  those  degrading 
disabilities  whicli  Paul  pronounces  on  her,  nor  are  they 
received  as  authority. 

According  to  the  word  of  the  Lord  God,  the  eating  of 
the  forbidden  fruit  brought  not  sin  or  death,  but  know- 
ledge, which  is  the  real  life.  It  made  the  woman  and  the 
man  as  the  gods.  It  brouglit  the  god-like  faculties  of 
thought  and  reason,  and  made  man  a  responsible  being. 
Remission  of  sentence  is  not  instability,  but  the  divine 
attribute  of  mercy.  Other  instances  as  great  are  in  the 
history  of  God's  dealings.  He  repented  and  grieved  that 
He  had  ma^e  man  [Gen.  vi.,  6].  Provoked  by  the  panic 
of  the  Israelites  at  the  evil  report  which  the  spies  brought 
from  the  Promised  Land,  he  determined  to  smite  them 
with  pestilence  and  disinherit  them,  and  to  make  of  Moses 
the  chosen  and  a  greater  people;  but  Moses  dissuaded  Him 
by  the  suggestion  of  the  triumph  this  would  give  to  the 
Egyptians,  and  the  way  they  would  fling  it  up.  [Num- 
bers, xiv.].  But  for  that  rclQuting  the  Israelites  would  be 
Mosaics, 

Woman's  transgression  which  was  from  the  noblest 
14 


^10       THE   CASE  AGAINST  WOMAN" — A   RElIEAtllNO. 

aspiration,  has  been  debased  to  the  freak  of  female  abnor- 
mal desires  and  longings  of  appetite.  The  persnasion  of 
her  reason  by  the  promise  of  knowledge  like  the  gods  has 
been  debased  into  the  baby  idiocy  which  is  attracted  by 
the  pretty  colors  of  a  poisonous  snake.  The  snaky 
superstitions  of  the  lowest  tribes  have  been  foisted  upon 
the  plain  Bible  narrative,  to  degrade  the  woman  who  came 
perfect  from  the  Creator's  hand,  the  loveliest  of  her  sex. 
Her  noble  seeking  for  a  higher  life  has  been  made  the 
proof  of  her  base  creation.  She  has  been  charged  with 
evils  which  did  not  come,  and  man  has  depraved  himself 
in  order  to  charge  his  depravity  upon  woman.  She  who 
brought  into  the  world  knowledge  which  made  men  like 
gods  has  been  charged  with  sinking  it  into  ignorance  and 
misery. 

Man  has  always  taken  the  office  of  expounding  the 
Word  of  God,  and  this  is  an  example  of  his  ability  in  per- 
verting it  to  his  own  glory  and  to  woman's  degradation. 
Have  not  the  strong-minded  sufficient  ground  for  their 
declaration  that  man  has  abused  his  usurped  office  of 
revealing  and  expounding  the  Scriptures,  to  make  them  a 
means  of  betraying  woman  to  a  state  of  servitude  through 
her  higher  religious  nature  ? 


XLV. 
WOMAN'S  REVERSIBLE  POLARITY. 

IS  A  BAD  woman  worse  than  a  bad  man  can  be?  Piev. 
Dr.  Morgan  Dix  sa3's  so,  and  he  knows  it  professionally. 
He  said  it  in  the  concluding  sermon  of  his  Lenten  series 
on  "A  Mission  for  Woman,"  when  fasting  had  filled  him 
with  charity  in  place  of  victuals.  He  said  that  woman  is 
both  better  and  worse  than  man.  She  is  like  the  little 
girl  who  had  a  little  curl  that  hung  straight  down  on  her 
**forrid";  when  she  is  good  she  is  very  good,  and  when  she 
is  bad  she  is  horrid.  And  because  she  can  not  touch  sin 
without  utter  defilement,  his  mission  for  her  is  that  if  not 
saved  by  marriage  and  much  child-bearing,  she  should  be 
saved  by  consecrating  herself  in  holy  sisterhoods  to  the 
work  of  rescuing  the  world  from  the  tidal  wave  of  man's 
infidelity. 

The  Rev.  Doctor's  logic  ranks  with  his  moral  sense. 
Man  sins  and  is  not  spoiled;  but  when  woman  does  it,  down 
she  goes,  and  there  is  no  redemption. 

"  Man's  sin  is  of  his  life  a  thing  apart; 
'Tis  woman's  whole  existence.' 

Here  is  the  holy  man's  indictment  of  woman: 
*'And  let  me  suggest  one  more  topic  for  reflection — a 
terrible  one,  indeed.  Remember  that  in  the  woman  are 
the  poles  of  the  good  and  evil  in  human  nature.  AVhcn 
good,  she  is  the  best  of  all  that  exists;  when  bad,  she  is  the 
worst.  Nothing  is  so  lovely  as  a  woman  true  to  God  and 
herself;  nothing  so  frightful  as  a  woman  false  to  self  and 
God.  In  the  history  of  woman  you  shall  find  extremes  so 
wide  asunder  as  to  confound  and  terrify  in  the  comparison, 

Sll 


212  woman's  EBVEKSIBLE   fOLARITlf. 

A  woman  may  be  better  than  any  man;  she  may  be  worse 
than  any  man;  there  is  no  conceivable  impurity  like  that 
of  a  profligate  woman;  there  is  no  hate  so  dire  and  implac- 
able as  woman-hatred." 

This  is  an  ancient  slander,  and  it  is  well  to  have  it  thus 
formulated  for  examination.  Because  woman  is  better 
than  man,  must  she  be  worse?  The  Rev.  Doctor  says  she 
has  a  moral  polarity,  and  must  point  either  to  the  good  or 
bad  pole,  and  that  for  her  there  is  no  equilibrium,  no  mid- 
dle course  where,  like  man,  she  may  be  just  good  enough 
to  be  safe,  and  not  so  good  as  to  be  in  danger  of  falling. 
Thus  does  it  appear  that  the  moral  safety  of  man  is  in  his 
inability  to  get  high  enough  to  fall  with  momentum. 
Woman  is  like  the  man  in  the  rhyme,  who,  when  he  lived, 
he  lived  in  clover,  and  when  he  died  he  died  all  over. 

If  moral  principles  and  good  lives  did  not  build  their 
own  foundation,  so  as  to  grow  strong  and  secure  in  the 
base  in  proportion  as  they  rise  above  evil,  there  would  be 
little  hope  for  the  world.  But  the  Eev.  Dix  finds  that  the 
moral  nature  is  subject  to  physical  fermentations  in  which 
the  sweetest  fluids  make  the  sourest  vinegar,  and  the  rich- 
est food  the  most  offensive  decay.  Thus  in  his  parallel  he 
says :  "  True  it  is  that  the  best  things  become,  if  corrupted, 
the  worst."  His  accusation  of  woman  reverses  all  moral 
principles  and  progress,  and  assumes  that  goodness  of 
nature  and  living  has  no  foundation  and  no  security  in 
itself,  but  that  the  higher  it  rises  the  more  is  it  liable  to 
topple  over  and  fall  into  the  abyss  of  depravity,  in  which 
the  depth  of  her  fall  is  according  to  the  height  to  which 
she  had  attained. 

He  offers  no  reason  why  man  can  not  be  so  bad  as  a  bad 
woman,  save  that  he  can  not  be  so  good  as  a  good  woman. 
His  moral  safety  lies  in  his  being  a  moderate  sinner.  This 
sounds  like  the  counsel  of  that  professor  of  moral  senti- 


woman's  reversible  polarity.  313 

ments,  Mr.  Joseph  Surface,  to  Lady  Teazle,  that  her 
consciousness  of  her  own  innocence  was  a  great  peril  to  her 
reputation,  and  that  if  she  would  sin  a  little  her  conduct 
would  be  more  circumspect  and  her  character  more  secure. 

When  an  accusation  is  contrary  to  reason,  to  moral 
evolution,  and  to  the  faith  upon  which  the  young  are  trained 
in  the  right  way,  it  needs  to  be  supported  by  positive 
proof.  Wliat  proof  has  Dr.  Dix  that  woman  may  be  worse 
than  man  can?  That  "there is  no  conceivable  impurity 
like  that  of  a  profligate  woman?"  Where  did  he  see  this? 
Who  has  borne  him  witness?  Men  are  not  lacking  in  con- 
fidence in  man's  talent  for  wi€kedness  and  impurity. 

The  custom  is  to  instance  the  houses  of  bad  fame  as  the 
lowest  sinks  of  iniquity,  and  the  inmates  as  the  sinkers. 
If  the  Rev.  Doctor  has  looked  to  them  for  his  evidence, 
the  thing  that  most  shocked  his  feelings  was  that  women 
could  be  as  impure  as  men.  The  "prostitute"  is  no  more 
vile  than  the  prostituter.  Society  makes  outcasts  of  the 
one,  and  tolerates  the  other,  and  then  makes  its  own  injus- 
tice tlie  ground  for  pronouncing  the  total  depravity  of  its 
victim.  But  a  clergyman,  representing  a  great  church  en- 
dowment, and  deliberately  preparing  a  series  of  Lenten 
discourses  on  a  mission  for  women,  ought  not  to  repeat 
this  terrible  injustice.  And  when  he  makes  this  a  reason 
for  appointing  women  to  a  holy  mission  to  save  the  world, 
he  seems  to  show  that  in  his  head  both  morals  and  logic 
have  turned  topsy-turvy. 

If  the  Rev.  Doctor  had  improved  Lent  by  a  course  of 
prayerful  humiliation  and  introspection,  instead  of  a  series 
of  discourses  on  the  frailties  of  woman,  he  might  have  been 
receptive  to  the  sense  of  justice,  which  Avould  have  per- 
ceived that  the  penalty  which  society  inflicts  on  woman 
exclusively,  is  her  "fall,"  and  that  it  is  not  because  of  a 
conversion  or  perversion  of  her  moral  nature.    If  he  were 


214  woman's  reversible  polarity. 

not  indulging  a  ferocity  of  rhetoric  in  heaping  condemna- 
tion on  woman,  reason  and  justice  would  have  directed  his 
moral  sense  to  the  fact  that  the  license  of  the  marriage 
contract  is  an  external  thing,  and  not  a  thing  of  the  moral 
and  spiritual  nature. 

A  woman  has  written  a  New  York  paper  that  once  on  a 
time  she  attended  a  course  of  Lenten  discourses  by  Dr.  Dix, 
in  which  he  advocated,  with  much  rhetorical  force,  the  celi- 
bacy of  ministers  as  essential  to  their  holy  office;  and  that 
on  a  subsequent  time  she  was  invited  to  his  wedding,  and 
that  since  then  she  has  less  faith  in  the  infallibility  of  his 
Lenten  oracles.  Did  the  Rev.  Doctor  then  "fall"?  Or 
did  he  plead  to  himself  the  concession  in  the  rule  laid 
down  by  St.  Paul? 

To  say  that  the  fact  that  the  woman  is  sent  to  the  guil- 
lotine for  an  act  Avhich  brings  no  penalty  to  the  man 
proves  that  woman's  hold  on  life  is  feeble  compared  to 
man's  would  hardly  be  accepted  as  medical  science;  yet  it 
is  as  rational  as  the  Rev.  Dix's  moral  science,  which  makes 
woman  worse  than  man  because  society  executes  her  for 
that  which  brings  no  penalty  to  him.  This  injustice  is  a 
terrible  reproach  to  mankind;  yet  this  clergyman  sees 
nothing  in  it  but  an  occasion  to  heap  condemnation  on 
woman,  and  to  indorse  the  slanders  which  run  through 
all  ancient  literature. 

By  one  thing  alone  does  woman  "fall,"  and  it  is  that  by 
which  man  appears  to  be  incapable  of  falling.  In  no  other 
offense  does  society  hold  woman  worse  than  man,save  in  that 
in  which  she  is  the  victim  of  its  own  injustice.  By  acts 
of  tyranny  in  power  and  of  ferocity  in  war,  women  never 
fall.  Dr.  Dix  goes  on  to  cite  historical  instances  of 
woman's  cruelty,  and  to  name  good  and  bad  woman  in 
juxtaposition,  to  point  his  queer  rule  that  woman  must 
fly  either  to  one  extreme  or  the  other.  And  this  is  his 
inoral; 


■W0MA^''S   IIEVEIISIBLE   POLARITY.  215 

''Contrast  these  tyjies  of  your  own  sex;  they  form  tlie 
opposite  poles;  towiird  the  one  or  the  other  you  yourselves 
must  incline;  for  whoever  kept  an  exact  equilibrium  be- 
tween the  evil  and  the  good?  True  is  it  that  the  best 
things  become,  if  corrupted,  the  worst.  On  that  fact  we 
find  the  justification  of  our  course  in  speaking  to  woman 
as  I  liave  ventured  to  do;  in  warning  the  thoughtless,  in 
awakening  the  sluniberer." 

The  "female  furies  of  the  French  Revolution"  were 
no  worse  than  the  male  furies;  "the  petroleuses  of  the 
French  Commune  "  were  male  and  female.  One  of  them. 
Rose  Michel,  has  lately  set  forth  on  the  platform  ideas  of 
universal  humanity  from  which  Dr.  Dix  might  take  a 
lesson.  The  Communes  were  fighting,  first,  for  ancient 
institutions;  next,  against  massacre.  Are  houses  more 
than  lives?  The  assertion  that  "  the  woman  conspirators 
and  co-workers  in  Nihilism "  are  "used  by  men  as  pre- 
cious above  all  others  for  their  subtlety  and  power  of  un- 
dying ferocity,  merciless,  pitiless,"  contradicts  its  own 
charge  that  woman  is  worse  than  man,  and,  if  it  proves 
anything,  proves  her  the  more  heroic-.  It  is  an  indulgence 
of  pitiless  ferocity  in  rhetoric. 

Is  there  nothing  pitiless  in  the  constant  train  of  exiles 
to  Siberia,  and  in  the  tyranny  which  makes  even  the  sus- 
picion of  aspirations  for  free  institutions  swift  destruction? 
Is  there  no  cruelty  in  the  Russian  despotism  save  the  taking 
off  of  a  Czar?  If  the  despatching  of  half  a  dozen  Czars  would 
bring  constitutional  limitations  of  tyranny,  they  would  be 
well  spent.  In  these,and  in  his  contrasted  historical  names, 
the  Rev.  Dix  makes  the  moral  muddle  of  mixing  up  heroic 
acts  of  women,  in  Avhat  they  believed  the  cause  of  freedom 
of  the  people,  with  lives  of  sexual  sinning,  as  alike  proving 
the  bad  nature  of  woman.  He  may  find  in  Scripture  wo- 
men honored  for  the  heroic  acts  which  he  makes  the  proof 


216  woman's  reversible  polarity. 

of  their  bad  polarity,  as  when  Judith  slew  Holofernes  and 
Jael  the  sleeping  Sisera.  He  may  there  find  tyrannicide  a 
virtue. 

Dr.  Dix's  Lenten  discourses  have  added  not  to  the 
world's  stock  of  charity,  and  have  offered  nothing  to 
lighten  woman's  destiny.  On  the  contrary,  they  have 
added  to  its  uncharitableness  and  slanderous  disposition, 
and  tJieir  tendency  is  to  harden  its  ancient  injustice 
toward  all  women  and  toward  those  whom  it  casts  out  as 
fallen.  His  view  of  woman  as  wife  is  not  high,  and  his 
**  mission  for  women "  who  have  not  the  luck  to  marry  is 
not  so  high  in  its  conditions  as  that  of  Hamlet  to  Ophelia. 
He  said:  *'Get  thee  to  a  nunnery;  why  wouldst  thou  be 
a  breeder  of  sinners?"  Dr.  Dix  says:  "If  no  man  makes 
thee  a  breeder  of  sinners,  get  thee  to  a  nunnery!"  If  he 
should  get  down  to  the  bottom  of  his  own  system  he  would 
find  that  it  is  the  old  Oriental  one,  which  requires  women 
to  be  shut  up  in  harems. 

That  a  clergyman  deals  in  things  above  human  reason, 
need  not  prevent  him  from  reasoning  on  morals,  unless  it 
be  from  force  of  habit.  But  Dr.  Dix  does  the  logical  feat 
of  making  the  frailties  of  woman  the  reason  for  her  taking 
the  mission  of  rescuing  the  world  from  man's  infidelity. 
He  is  so  at  sea  also  in  his  moral  sense  as  to  class  "women 
who  have  done  deeds  of  highest  heroism,  for  what  they 
believed  patriotism,  with  those  abandoned  in  moral  degrada- 
tion, as  alike  proving  the  tendency  of  woman's  moral 
polarity  to  the  bad  pole,  upon  the  least  variation  from  the 
good.  The  Rev.  Dix  has  made  a  sensation  and  a  notoriety, 
and  has  fostered  a  bad  custom  for  the  Lenten  season,  per- 
verting it  from  humiliation  to  Pharisaical  uncharitable- 
ness; but  still  woman  will  have  to  work  out  her  own 
destiny. 


XLYI. 

THE  DEVILS  AND  THE  SWINE -A  LAW- 
SUIT. 

TO  DISCUSS  a  case  which  is  to  be  judicially  tried,  is 
not  good  form  in  general;  but  the  suit  against  the 
Church  for  the  value  of  the  swine  into  which  the  devils 
were  cast  is  so  famous  and  far-reaching  that  discussion 
will  not  hold  off,  even  though  it  may  disqualify  readers  for 
an  unintelligent  Jury.  The  suit  is  by  the  heirs  of  the 
owners  of  the  swine  against  the  Roman  Pontiff,  as  Vicar  of 
Jesus  Christ  and  head  of  the  Church.  Service  has  also 
been  made  on  the  patriarchs  of  Constantinople,  Autioch 
and  Jerusalem. 

None  demur  to  the  liability;  on  the  contrary,  standing 
in  the  court  is  sought  for  even  as  defendants  against  a  large 
money  claim,  as  a  recognition  of  legitimacy.  But  the 
plaintiff  has  drawn  the  line  at  the  Roman  and  Oriental 
Churches.  Since  the  Supreme  Court  of  Ohio,  in  a  frame 
of  mind  which  was  legal  rather  than  evangelical,  overruled 
the  Superior  Court  of  Cincinnati,  which,  in  a  mind  more 
evangelical  than  legal,  had  ordered  the  Sheriff  to  put  the 
King  James  Bible  into  the  State  schools,  this  generation  is 
officially  so  destitute  of  knowledge  of  the  Scriptures  that 
it  will  have  to  refer  to  the  records  in  order  to  understand 
this  case.     It  is  found  in  Mark  v. 

The  facts  are  adjudicated.  The  Church  has  approved 
the  record  as  canonical;  therefore  the  facts  have  not  to  be 
tried  over  and  over  by  three  or  more  Courts,  as  our  lawyers 
think  requisite  to  a  complete  judiciary.  Only  the  ques- 
tions of  law  are  at  issue.     The  claim  is  that  in  order  to 

217 


218  THE   DEVILS   AND  THE   SWINE — A   LAWSUIT. 

relieve  the  man  from  tlie  devils  they  were  sent  into  the 
swine,  who  thereupon  "  ran  violently  down  a  steep  place 
into  the  sea,  and  were  drowned";  therefore  that  the 
Church  is  liable  to  the  owner  of  the  swine  for  the  loss  of 
his  property. 

The  number  of  the  swine  is  recorded  as  "  about  two 
thousand" —  enough  to  found  a  fortune  and  a  family.  The 
interest  for  over  eighteen  centuries  will  make  a  pretty  sum. 
The  record  relates  that  the  devils,  when  commanded  to 
come  out  of  the  man,  ^'^  besought  Him  saying:  'Send  us 
into  the  swine  that  we  may  enter  into  them,'"  and  that 
*' Jesus  gave  them  leave."  It  also  makes  plain  that  because 
of  this  entry  the  swine  acted  in  the  strange  manner  which 
resulted  in  their  destruction. 

If  the  case  were  judged  according  to  finite  limitations, 
the  record  would  make  it  out  in  favor  of  the  owner  of  the 
swine,  and  nothing  would  remain  but  to  compute  the 
value  of  the  hogs  from  the  market  report  of  the  time  and 
the  interest,  and  to  give  judgment  against  the  Pope  for 
the  sum.  But  the  case  runs  into  infinite  matters,  and  the 
issue  is  upon  questions  which  sound  the  depths  of  theology, 
particularly  of  the  demonology  branch,  and  will  call  forth 
the  profoundest  learning  of  the  lawyers  of  the  Vatican. 

What  are  these  devils,  and  what  their  right  of 
habitation?  By  what  authority  did  they  possess  the  man? 
Where  went  they  when  the  swine  drowned  themselves? 
The  suit  must  fetch  forth  from  the  Supreme  Pontiff  a 
definition  of  the  nature,  source,  powers  and  rights  of 
devils,  of  whom  mankind  has  much  experience  with  but 
little  knowdedge.  The  common  notion  is  that  they  are 
all  emanations  from  the  head  devil,  who  has  infinite  divisi- 
bility; as  also  that  good  spirits  are  parts  of  the  Supreme 
Good  Spirit.  The  learned  Alexander  Cruden  says  that  a 
collocation  of  the  Scripture  passages  in  which  Satan  aiid 


THE  DEVILS   AND  THE  SWINE — A   LAWSUIT.  219 

the  rest  are  mentioned  shows  that  he  is  identical  with  Luci- 
fer who  fell  from  heaven,  drawing  a  third  part  of  the  popu- 
lation with  him,  also  with  the  devil,  Beelzehub,  the  Ser- 
pent, Prince  of  the  Powers  of  Darkness,  God  of  this  World, 
Apollyon,  Angel  of  the  Bottomless  Pit  and  many  other  de- 
scriptive names  indicating  the  adversary  of  mankind. 

He  says  also  that  "  By  permission  he  exercises  a  sort  of 
government  in  the  world."  In  the  Book  of  Job  is  this 
narration  of  Satan:  **  Now  there  was  a  day  when  the 
sons  of  God  came  to  present  themselves  before  the  Lord, 
and  Satan  came  also  among  them.''  Being  asked  whence 
he  came,  he  answered:  "From  going  to  and  fro  in  the 
earth,  and  from  walking  up  and  down  therein."  This 
seems  to  be  accepted  as  his  proper  vocation.  It  conveys 
that  Satan  had  either  rights  or  privileges  which  were 
respected.  All  Scripture  shows  that  the  devil  has  had 
from  the  beginning  a  great  kingdom  in  mankind;  nor  are 
signs  visible  of  its  running  out.  They  who  by  their  divine 
vocation  have  expert  knowledge,  say  that  Satan  has  hold 
of  the  greater  part  of  mankind. 

The  record  relates  that  when  the  devils  were  com- 
manded to  come  out  of  the  man,  they  "besought  Him 
much  not  to  send  them  out  of  the  country."  In  them 
there  breathed  no  soul  so  dead  who  never  to  himself  had 
said,  this  is  my  own,  my  native  land.  They  had  the  pa- 
thetic sentiment  of  the  ballad  of  Sweet  Home,  for  which  a 
generous  citizen  has  dug  up  the  author's  bones.  They  had 
chosen  to  abide  even  in  the  swine  rather  than  to  be  sent 
am  ong  strangers.  Yet  there  are  those  who  deny  person- 
ality to  devils.  Likewise  do  they  deny  a  personal  God. 
They  talk  of  a  good  spirit  and  an  evil  sj^irit;  but  they  can 
not  conceive  either  without  personal  identity.  The  Posi- 
tivists  tried  to  substitute  the  worship  of  the  ideal  virtues, 
but  they  found  they  could  not  idealize  without  materiuli?- 


220         THE  DEVILS  AND  THE  SWINE — A   LAWSUIT. 

ing.  So  they  resolved  to  idealize  in  tlie  form  of  a  woman, 
which  was  not  so  bad  as  they  might  do. 

The  law  of  the  case  will  be  found  to  hang  on  a  single 
point.  He  who  commanded  the  devils  to  come  out  of  the 
man,  wielded  legally  all  of  the  Creator's  power  over  the 
universe.  The  foundation  of  the  science  of  theology  is 
the  principle  that  the  Creator  may  do  His  pleasure  with 
the  created,  to  save  or  destroy.  The  swine  and  the  man 
were  alike  His.  No  right  of  private  property  can  be  set 
up  against  the  Creator's  supreme  riglit.  Such  a  claim 
is  impious.  The  man  in  whom  the  devils  were  had  a  case 
for  damages  as  much  as  the  owner  of  the  swine.  If  this 
were  allowed,  all  sorts  of  people,  possessed  with  all  sorts  of 
devils,  would  be  suing  for  damages.  For  the  power  to 
cast  out  devils  was  conferred  on  the  Apostolic  Church. 

Nor  could  an  action  lie  against  the  devil.  Whatever 
dominion  he  exercises,  and  whatever  or  whoever  he 
possesses,  must  be  either  by  permission  or  by  concurrent 
and  equivocal  power.  In  neither  alternative  could  an 
action  against  the  devil  be  maintained.  When  the  suit  is 
stated  in  its  real  nature,  as  for  trespass  on  created  things, 
against  the  very  Creator  of  all  things,  its  impiety  is  visible 
even  to  the  naked  eye.  The  case  will  be  tried  on  the 
record.  Much  irrelevant  discussion  will  be  had  by  those 
who  think  themselves  advanced  thinkers  because  they 
attack  our  cherished  beliefs,  but  who  are  crudely  and 
simply  getting  an  inkling  of  ideas  which  have  been  ground 
over  since  the  world  began . 

If  comments  of  Eastern  journals  on  the  part  which 
pork  has  played  in  esthetic  culture  in  Cincinnati  were 
other  than  envy,  a  writer  in  this  center  of  the  fine  arts 
might  be  biased  by  culture  on  the  side  of  the  respected 
owner  of  two  thousand  hogs  which  were  sacrificed  to  get 
the  devils  out  of  one  beggar;  but  the  judicial  mind  can  not 
avoid  the  conclusion  that  the  claim  is  untenable  in  law. 


tfiE  DEVILS  AND  THE  SWiKE— A  LAWSUIT.  221 

In  all  ages  and  civilizations  have  mankind  peopled  the 
world  with  spirit  beings.  The  world  has  never  got  along 
without  devils.  Preachers  always  find  them  handy  to  have 
about  them.  They  furnish  a  charitable  explanation  of  the 
conduct  of  husbands,  wives,  children,  relations,  friends 
and  enemies. 

The  number  which  possessed  this  man  shows  an  allow- 
ance for  increase  of  population,  and  supports  the  common 
belief  in  the  prevalence  of  demoniac  possession.  There  is 
a  record  of  a  case  in  which  seven  devils  were  cast  out 
of  one  wonittn,  indicating  a  generous  allowance  to  that 
side  of  animated  nature.  The  plaintiff  in  this  suit  will 
surely  be  defeated;  but  the  trial  will  be  very  interesting, 
because  of  the  authoritative  definition  of  the  state,  rights 
and  limitations  of  devils  which  may  be  expected  from  the 
Vatican  theologians. 


XLVII. 

THE  CONVEETED  PRIZE-FIGHTER. 

CONVERSIONS  of  the  heaviest  villains  are  easy  when 
they  come  to  the  gallows.  Your  hangman's  noose 
is  a  powerful  preacher.  When  a  man  must  travel,  he 
packs  his  carpet-bag.  What  a  pardon  or  commutation 
would  do  can  never  be  found  out  without  trying,  therefore 
it  should  never  be  tried  on  a  converted  murderer.  Let  his 
salvation  be  made  sure.  Some  who  have  been  noted  for 
wickedness  have  been  converted  without  previous  convic- 
tion at  law,  and  have  become  preachers  or  exhorters, 
testifying  what  saving  grace  has  done  for  them,  and  urg- 
ing others  to  try  it.  In  general  they  do  not  hold  out. 
When  the  bracing  of  the  new  sensation  and  notoriety  has 
slackened  they  are  apt  to  fall  back,  as  the  dog  mentioned 
in  Scripture,  that  encores  his  surfeit,  and  the  waslied  sow 
that  returns  to  her  congenial  mire.  Not  so  with  Ben. 
Hogan,  once  a  j)rize-fighter,  gambler  and  rough  of  New 
York,  but  for  the  last  two  years  a  soldier  of  the  cross  in 
the  Evangelical  Army,  and  fighting  the  devil  and  his  works 
at  Chicago.  Ben.  Hogan  has  now  evinced  a  Christian 
spirit — or  rather  the  spirit  of  Christ — which  is  an  example 
to  the  best  of  those  who  were  born  of  pious  parents  and 
trained  in  piety  from  their  mother^s  knee. 

Two  years  of  perseverance  is  pretty  good  proof  of  the 
sincerity  of  this  conversion,  but  Hogan  has  now  given  one 
much  higher.  His  example  converted  his  pretty  wife,  who 
also  joined  the  Evangelical  Army.  They  were  successful 
in  Chicago,  were  well  received  by  the  clergy  and  the  tem- 
perance workers,  and  have  a  record  of  over  five  hundred 

S23 


THE   CONVERTED   PKIZE-PIGHTER.  223 

conversions  through  their  instrumentality.  In  an  evil 
hour,  probably  through  the  contrivance  of  him  who,  for 
some  inscrutable  reason,  is  permitted  to  go  about  hunting 
souls  to  perdition,  Ilogan,  about  five  weeks  ago,  went  to 
Omaha  for  evangelical  work,  leaving  his  wife  at  Cliicago, 
where  this  gentle  lamb  fell  a  prey  to  a  wolf  well  dressed  in 
the  sheep's  clothing  of  an  officer  of  the  Evangelical  Army. 
When  Hogan  returned  he  found  his  wife  had  departed 
and  was  living  with  this  wolf  in  another  quarter.  Did 
he  go  there  in  a  rage  to  kill  her  or  her  seducer  in  the 
usual  Christian  mode — to  then  plead  emotional  insanity, 
and  be  acquitted  by  the  jury  and  applauded  by  a  crowded 
court-room  and  the  newspapers  as  a  man  who  had  vin- 
dicated his  honor? 

Did  he  take  advantage  of  his  pugilistic  training  to 
"slug"  the  sanctimonious  villain  within  an  inch  of  his 
life?  Did  he  shoot  him,  and  turn  his  deserting  wife  out 
upon  the  world  to  an  outcast's  life?  He  did  none  of  these 
heroic,  chivalrous  and  honorable  things  which  the  world 
holds  necessary  for  the  man  to  do  in  such  cases,  to  vindicate 
his  manhood  and  honor.  Instead  of  the  conventional, 
heroic  madness,  he  was  stricken  with  grief  for  his  bereave- 
ment, and  with  pity  for  his  erring  wife.  Instead  of  the 
savagery  of  honor  which  demands  murder  and  ruin  of 
others  to  appease  itself — the  same  noble  rage  that  inspires 
two  rival  lords  of  the  heifer  herd  to  lock  horns  to  the 
death — he  was  crushed  with  affliction.  The  heroic  vein  in 
such  cases  is  purely  selfish;  but  Ilogan's  sorrow  was  for 
his  fallen  wife  more  than  for  himself.  His  chief  solicitude 
was  lest  she  should  suffer  the  usual  fate  of  the  fallen 
woman,  and  be  deserted  by  her  seducer) 

He  sought  their  abiding  place,  and  found  them  to- 
gether. Here  was  no  Othello  suspicion,  but  the  fact.  This 
ex-prize-fighter  talked  compassionately  to  the  wife  who  had 


SI24  THE   COKVERTED   tRIZE-FlGHTER. 

deserted  liim,  and  entreatingly  to  the  man  who  had — in 
the  current  phrase — dishonored  him.  He  exhorted  him  to 
be  kind  to  her,  and  having  thus  assured  him  against  any 
fear  of  his  revenge,  he  tearfully  bade  them  farewell.  This 
was  not  heroic  in  the  conventional  mode.  It  was  not  that 
selfish  honor  which  slays  the  man  and  destroys  the  wife  to 
appease  itself.  But  when  heroes  come  to  be  measured  by 
the  true  test,  shall  not  Ben  Hogan's  name  stand  above  all 
the  rest?  It  is  merely  equal  and  impartial  justice  between 
accusers  and  accused,  which  says  ''let  him  that  is  without 
sin  cast  the  first  stone  at  her,"  but  here  was  a  husband,  a 
man  of  muscle  and  courage,  in  the  presence  of  his  stolen 
wife  and  of  the  man  who  had  robbed  him,  saying  in  pity 
and  sorrow  to  him  :  Be  kind  to  her,  as  I  have  been."  To 
call  this  the  Christian  spirit  would  be  inadequate;  it  is  the 
very  spirit  of  Christ  dwelling  in  the  soul  of  an  ex-prize- 
fighter. Up  aloft,  where  the  nautical  ballad  has  sent  Tom 
Bowline,  is  a  high  seat  for  this  pugilist  whose  heroism 
and  manhood  have  made  the  murderous  rage  which  is 
called  honor  in  these  cases  appear  a  beastly  butchery. 


XLYIII. 

THE  CASE  OF  SIIYLOCK-LAW  REVIEW. 

THE  original  case  was  a  suit  of  Shylock  against  Antonio, 
upon  a  bond  for  the  payment  of  three  thousand 
ducats  or  a  pound  of  his  flesh,  but  its  conversion  by  the 
Court  to  a  criminal  proceeding,  with  penalty  of  forfeiture 
to  the  State,  made  it  a  State  case.  The  judgment  stands, 
mocking  all  principles  of  law,  making  the  judiciary  a 
juggle,  perverting  the  public  morals,  making  opprobrious 
metaphor  an  easement  to  the  conscience  for  breach  of  con- 
tracts, and  fostering  a  cruel  religious  prejudice. 

For  the  credit  of  the  Bench  and  of  the  profession  of 
law,  and  because  of  its  pernicious  influence  on  morals,  the 
judgment  of  the  Court  should  be  overruled,  as  it  must  be 
when  tried  by  that  perfection  of  reason  of  which  they  say 
the  law  is  the  result.  Nor  is  the  case  beyond  a.  measure 
of  restitution.  As  to  the  law  points,  both  the  counsel  for 
the  defendant  and  the  Court  admitted  that  the  contract 
was  lawful.  Counsel  did  not  even  plead  that  it  was  against 
public  policy;  which  is  a  handy  higher  law  to  let  corpora- 
tions out  of  their  contracts;  like  as  tlie  vague  phrase  that 
an  act  is  a  police  regulation,  is  a  way  of  driving  it  through 
the  Constitution. 

The  Court  having  adjudged  tlie  contract  lawful,  must 
construe  it  in  a  rational  sense  to  make  it  practicable.  The 
office  of  the  judiciary  is  to  enforce  the  specific  pcrfoi-mance 
of  contracts,  not  to  fetch  in  extraneous  conditions  to  make 
performance  impossible.  The  contract  to  sell  a  thing  is  a 
contract  to  do  and  to  permit  the  buyer  to  do  all  that  is 
necessary  to  put  him  in  possession.  It  includes  the  use 
15  225 


236  THE   CASE   OF   SHYLOCK — LAW   REVIEW. 

for  the  time  of  whatever  other  things  of  the  seller  are 
requisite  to  en;ible  the  buyer  to  take  his  purchase. 

For  example:  He  who,  on  his  own  land,  sells  a  horse, 
can  not  miike  the  buyer  a  trespasser  for  riding  him  over 
that  land  to  take  him  home.  He  who  sells  a  piece  of  land 
in  the  center  of  a  tract,  gives  to  the  buyer  the  right  of  way 
to  the  land,  though  this  be  not  expressed.  He  who  sells 
a  ci'op  on  the  ground,  implies  a  contract  that  on  his  prem- 
ises the  buyer  may  do  all  that  is  requisite  to  gather  and 
carry  away  the  crop. 

When  Antonio  contracted  to  Shylock  a  pound  of  his 
flesh,  to  be  cut  off  by  Shylock  wherever  he  chose,  the  sale 
included  all  that  was  requisite  to  Shylock  in  taking 
possession.  If  blood-letting  and  danger  to  life  were  con- 
sequent, they  were  incidents  of  the  contract,  and  were 
Antonio's  lookout,  not  Shylock's.  The  ruling  that  he 
must  cut  off,  neither  more  nor  less  than  a  pound,  and  that 
the  smallest  variation  in  weight  either  way  would  subject 
him  to  dire  penalties,  is  no  more  relative  to  this  than  to 
any  other  contract  for  future  delivery. 

In  adjudicating  a  contract  the  flesh  of  this  fleshy 
merchant  was  no  more  to  the  Court  than  hog's  flesh,  or 
any  other  that  is  bought  and  sold.  Antonio  having  made 
merchandise  of  his  flesh,  the  contract  must  be  treated  as 
simply  for  merchandise,  and  must  be  construed  in  a 
rational  way  to  make  performance  practicable. 

Suppose  that  one  of  our  merchant  princes  should  con- 
tract with  one  of  our  drover  princes  for  hogs  enough  to 
make  so  many  pounds  of  side-pork,  the  buyer  to  take  from 
the  lot  and  kill  till  he  got  his  amount,  would  a  Court  hold 
that  if  he  killed  a  part  of  a  hog  more  or  less  than  was 
required  to  make  the  exact  weight  the  contract  was  for- 
feited? Suppose  that  hogs  had  risen,  and  the  seller  desired 
to  back  out,  would  an  honest  Court  come  to  his  aid  by 
such  a  ruling  as  this: 


THE  CASE  OF  SnYLOCK— LAW  REVIEW.  227 

"Therefore  prepare  thou  to  butcher  the  hogs, 
Shed  thou  no  bloiMl,  nor  cut  thou  less  nor  more 
But  just  tlie  exact  weight;  be  it  but  so  much 
As  makes  it  light  or  heiivy  in  the  substance 
Or  the  division  of  the  twentieth  part 
Of  one  poor  scruple;  nay,  if  the  scale  do  turn 
But  in  the  estimation  of  a  hair. 
The  contract  is  broken,  and  all  your  pork  is  forfeit." 

Such  a  judgment  would  make  the  Court  a  juggling 
convenience  for  cornered  gamblers  in  produce. 

The  second  part  of  the  Court's  decision  is  that  the  con- 
tract brought  Shylock  within  the  criminal  law  of  Venice, 
which  forfeited  the  goods  and  life  of  any  alien  found  guilty 
of  seeking  by  either  direct  or  indirect  means  the  life  of 
any  citizen;  one-half  of  the  goods  to  the  State,  the  other 
half  to  the  citizen  plotted  against.  This  judgment  is 
overthrown  by  the  prior  judgment  that  the  contract  was 
lawful. 

The  Court  without  reservation  had  decided  the  contract 
lawful,  and  had  thrown  Antonio  upon  the  mercy  of  Shy- 
lock.  The  strange  deputy  lawyer,  who  came  in  to  repre- 
sent the  famous  counselor,  Bellario,  in  behalf  of  Antonio, 
had  admitted  that  the  contract  was  lawful,  and  had 
eloquently  besought  Shylock  to  have  mercy,  and  not  exact 
the  penalty  of  the  bond.  A  Court  can  not  adjudge  lawful 
a  contract  which  it  holds  to  be  an  attempt  to  take  the  life 
of  a  citizen  unlawfully. 

Plaving  decided  the  contract  lawful,  the  Court  can  not 
hold  that  it  is  an  unlawful  attempt  to  seek  the  life  of  a 
citizen,  nor  that  it  comes  under  the  law  of  crimes  in  any 
way.  The  decision  that  a  lawful  contract  is  an  unlawful 
act  is  so  plain  a  contradiction  that  it  leaves  the  Court's 
judgment  not  a  point  to  stand  on,  and  makes  its  sentence 
upon  Shylock  clearly  illegal. 

This  judicial  tribunal  presents  the  novel  spectacle  of  a 


228  THE  CASE   OF  SHYLOCK — LAW  EEVIEW. 

fresh  advocate  taking  complete  possession,  usurping  the 
functions  of  the  Bench,  reversing  its  judgment,  and  pro- 
nouncing the  law  of  the  case.  This  impropriety  would  be 
excepted  to  by  Mr.  Evarts,  and  by  any  lawyer  who  knew  his 
trade,  and  would  be  sufficient  in  any  higher  court  to  set 
aside  the  verdict.  And  this  pretended  lawyer  was  a  beauti- 
ful woman  in  masculine  garb. 

But  all  that  behold  the  trial  are  knowing  that  this  dis- 
guise of  male  attire  is  of  the  flimsiest,  and  in  fact  is  rather 
to  reveal  the  special  female  charms  than  to  hide  them.  In 
another  celebrated  case,  ''The  Trial  by  Jury," in  Gilbert^s 
operetta,  the  charms  and  wrongs  of  the  lovely  plaintiff  in 
the  suit  for  divorce,  turn  the  heads  of  judge  and  jury,  make 
them  forget  law  and  propriety,  and  cut  up  antics  unseemly 
in  a  court  of  law. 

So  it  is  likely  that  Portia's  charms,  revealed  rather  than 
concealed  by  the  male  costume,  turned  the  heads  of  the 
soft  Duke  and  of  the  dummy  Magnificoe,  and  made  them 
accept  her  swaggering  declamation  as  law,  and  to  give 
a  judgment  which  is  so  monstrously  unjust,  so  defiant  of  all 
principles  of  law,  and  so  contradictory  to  itbelf  that  it  is  a 
stain  on  the  character  of  the  judiciary,  and  a  standing 
testimony  that  the  court  was  for  the  time  thrown  off  its 
balance  by  a  woman. 

The  law  of  the  case  is  also  the  moral  of  the  case.  Anto- 
nio, a  venturesome  merchant,  fortunate  for  a  time,  prob- 
ably a  successful  cornerer,  ostentatious  and  prodigal  in  his 
expenditure,  had  gathered  upon  himself  a  lot  of  young 
spendthrift  bloods,  who  were  living  upon  him,  borrowing 
of  him,  consuming  his  substance,  and  in  all  ways  playing 
the  character  which,  in  the  choice  Italian  of  the  time,  was 
called  the  dead-beat.  Insolent  with  his  lucky  speculations, 
he  had  made  the  meek,  money-lending  Shylock  the  subject 
of  his  gibes  and  ignominious  insults. 


THE   CASE   OF  SHYLOCK — LAW   REVIEW.  229 

The  profligate  crew  had  squeezed  him  dry  for  tlie  time, 
and  had  to  look  about  for  a  way  to  make  a  raise.  The 
head-center  proposed  to  go  in  the  guise  of  a  rich  gentleman 
on  a  fortunc-liunting  expedition.  Wanting  an  outfit,  lie 
promised  Antonio  that  if  successful  he  will  repay  this  loan, 
and  wipe  out  the  old  score,  from  his  bride's  fortune.  "J'o 
promote  this  delectable  scheme  Antonio  comes  to  Shylock 
for  a  loan  to  the  adventurous  Bassanio. 

Shylock,  finding  the  Christian  merchant  in  this  amiable 
mood,  reminds  him  of  his  contumelious  treatment.  Tlie 
description  touches  any  heart  that  is  susceptible  to  pity; 
but  it  fetches  no  contrition  in  Antonio.  It  angers  liim, 
and  he  makes  the  truculent  declaration  that  although  he 
borrows,  he  will  continue  to  maltreat  the  lender.  Shylock 
tries  to  conciliate.  He  pleads  that  a  Jew  hath  the  same 
members,  senses  and  sensibilities  as  a  Christian,  and  sullers 
the  same  when  abused. 

He  lends  the  money  without  interest.  Bassanio's  name 
was  worthless  and  Antonio's  not  negotiable.  Their  bond 
would  be  a  mockery  of  security.  Shylock  comprehended 
the  humor  of  the  situation,  and  proposed  a  boiul,  which 
was  but  a  joke  on  security,  and  whose  forfeit  no  one  could 
think  probable.  Then  some  of  the  very  money  that  Shy- 
lock lent  was  spent  to  fit  out  one  of  the  profligates,  Lorenzo, 
to  carry  off  his  daughter. 

While  in  the  agony  of  his  bereavement,  a  couple  of 
these  rakes  mocked  him  with  cruel  Jests  for  the  way  he  had 
been  duped  and  robbed  of  his  daughter.  Then  a  feeling  of 
righteous  retribution  seized  upon  his  soul,  and  he  resolved 
that  if  the  bond  should  be  forfeited,  he  would  exact  the 
penalty.  But  he  found  that  the  law  of  Venice  had  no  jus- 
tice for  the  son  of  Israel;  that  its  supreme  tribunal  was  a 
juggle,  and  its  code  that  of  pirates. 

His  life  and  property  were  declared  forfeited;  one-half 


230  THE   CASE    OF   SHYLOCK — LAW    llEVIEW 

his  goods  to  the  State,  the  other  to  Antonio.  The  Duke 
pardoned  his  life,  and  agreed  that  the  State  would  remit  its 
moiety  of  the  fine,  and  that  Antonio  should  hold  the  other 
to  give  to  the  scapegrace  who  had  carried  off  Shylock's 
daughter.  To  this  was  added  the  crowning  atrocity,  that 
Shylock  should  embrace  Christianity,  and  should  record 
then  in  Court  a  gift  of  all  that  he  died  possessed  of  to 
Lorenzo. 

These  exactions  being  made  as  commutations  of  an 
illegal  sentence,  were  in  fact  seizures  by  the  State,  and  the 
State  is  liable  for  them.  The  liabilities  of  a  State  are  never 
outlawed.  Venice  ia  now  part  of  the  kingdom  of  Italy. 
That  great  government  would  hardly  consent  to  stain  its 
cliaracter  for  justice  by  denying  a  rehearing  to  this  case, 
and  a  rehearing  would  unquestionably  order  a  restitution 
of  all  these  exactions  and  interest  to  the  descendants  of 
Shylock.  A  specific  performance  of  the  contract  for  the 
pound  of  flesh  can  not  now  be  enforced,  but  that  part  may 
be  compounded  with  money. 

The  case  is  within  the  province  of  international  negoti- 
ations. Our  Government,  by  remonstrating  with  Russia  for 
the  cruelties  to  the  Jews,  has  made  a  precedent  for  pre- 
senting the  case  of  Shylock  to  the  Government  of  Italy. 
Shylock's  wealth  and  the  interest  thereon  will  be  a  pretty 
sum  for  his  heirs.  But  the  essential  part  is  to  obliterate 
this  stain  from  the  judiciary;  to  end  this  perversion  of  the 
moral  sentiments;  to  remove  that  which  supplies  a  term  of 
opprobrium  wherewith  to  palliate  default  in  contracts;  and 
to  reform  that  which  fosters  a  cruel  race  prejudice. 


XLIX. 

EYILS  OF   THE  HIGHER  EDUCATION  OF 
MALES. 

THE  recent  expounding  of  the  evils  resulting  from  the 
higher  education  of  females,  in  creating  a  distaste  for 
home  life,  for  family  duties,  and  for  maternity,  has  con- 
vinced every  reasonable  male.  He  who  has  laid  up  this 
wisdom  will  seek  in  a  wife  those  unsophisticated  domestic 
qualities  which  the  honest  farmer,  in  speaking  in  praise  of 
his  departed  wife,  in  pastoral  language  truly  Virgilian  called 
''a  good  family  beast/'  He  will  shun  the  females  who  are 
addicted  to  culture,  and  will  seek  a  wife  Avhere  the  poet 
seeks  inspiration,  in  simple  nature. 

But  the  expounding  has  taken  no  heed  to  the  males ; 
yet  the  most  of  the  arguments  apply  as  well  to  these  as  to 
the  females;  and  it  is  alike  important  to  the  family,  the 
propagation  of  the  race,  and  to  preservation  of  society,  that 
the  males  should  be  right.  This  does  not  refer  to  the 
necessary  education  for  the  professions.  That  may  be 
kept  in  a  narrow  line,  and  it  confines  the  mind  to  business; 
it  refers  to  education  of  the  intellect  for  its  own  sake. 
Culture  is  as  prone  to  distract  the  mind  of  the  male  from 
that  intense  pursuit  of  a  profession  or  trade  which  the 
struggle  of  life  makes  requisite  to  success,  as  the  mind  of 
the  female  from  family  duties. 

Among  business  men  is  a  saying  that  the  college  unfits 
boys  for  business.  H  so  with  this  rudimentary  part,  what 
can  be  expected  of  the  higher  education?  They  who  are 
successful  in  trade  or  the  professions,  can  not  sink  the 
shop  for  culture.     They  who  are  cultured   up  to  a  high 

231 


232      EVILS   OF   THE    IIIGIIEll    EDUCATION   OF   MALES. 

intellectuality  can  not  sink  it  for  the  shop.  "When  they 
should  be  applying  their  whole  minds  to  business  they 
will  be  running  off  into  science,  or  art,  or  the  sj)eculative 
pursuit  of  the  origin  of  things,  or  of  the  absolute  mind. 
This  multiplication  of  ideas  dissipates  the  one-ideaism 
which  is  essential  to  success  in  any  practical  line. 

Therefore  do  we  behold  the  illiterate  rising  from  nothing 
to  wealth,  by  means  of  one  idea  that  absorbs  the  whole 
mind,  and  draws  all  their  energies,  while  the  educated, 
who  ought  to  be  made  more  capable  thereby,  are  unsuccess- 
ful. Also,  the  higher  education  of  the  male  magnifies  his 
feeling  of  superiority  over  the  female,  makes  him  more 
arrogant;  unfits  him  for  companionshi]3  with  her,  and 
leads  him  to  seek  his  intellectual  society  away  from  home. 
Thus,  it  is  frequently  said  in  cases  of  marital  infelicity, 
that  the  male  has  intellectually  grown  away  from  his  wife, 
so  that  they  have  ceased  to  be  comjiatible;  which  is  to  say 
that  he  has  found  another  female  who  is  more  congenial. 

Males  of  the  higher  education  are  not  companionable  to 
their  females.  Their  minds  are  preoccupied  with  books  of 
other  men's  ideas,  or  are  in  search  of  the  unknowable.  They 
can  not  let  down  their  superior  minds  to  converse  on  such 
things  as  run  in  the  female  head.  They  lose  the  faculty 
of  conversation  in  the  family  circle.  On  the  other  hand, 
belief  in  education  is  a  superstition,  and  it  is  reverenced, 
although  its  outward  manifestations  may  be  only  stupidity. 
The  female  regards  the  higher  education  of  the  male  with 
awe,  although  his  bodily  presence  may  be  weak  and  his 
speech  comtemptible  —  as  St.  Paul  said  was  the  contrast 
his  critics  made  between  his  epistles  and  his  personal 
appearance.  In  many  various  ways  the  higher  education 
of  the  male  oppresses  and  bows  down  the  female,  and  helps 
to  keep  her  in  slavery. 

Paternity  is  alike  important  with  maternity  in  forming 


EVILS  OF  THE  HIGHEK   EDUCATION   OF   MALES.      233 

the  family  and  preserving  the  race,  and  the  higher  educa- 
tion has  as  marked  an  effect  on  this  function  of  tlie  male. 
Like  should  beget  its  like,  and  the  progeny  of  the  intellect- 
ual male  should,  in  the  order  of  nature,  go  on  to  higher 
attainments  from  generation  to  generation.  But  the  fact 
is  universally  recognized  that  males  of  superior  intellect 
rarely  have  sons  that  can  succeed  them;  that  in  general  their 
sons  are  not  above  mediocrity,  if  so  high  as  that.  This 
happens,  although  highly  intellectual  males  are  apt  to 
marry  silly  females,  as  if  to  counteract  the  degeneration 
of  the  higher  education  by  striking  an  average. 

Much  of  that  scantiness  of  offspring  which  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Morgan  Dix  makes  the  ground  of  a  heavy  arraignment  of 
wives,  as  a  consequence  of  the  distaste  created  for  family 
duty  by  too  much  culture,  may  be  the  result  of  the  inor- 
dinate development  of  the  intellectual  part  in  males.  But 
the  graver  consequence  is  the  degeneracy  of  the  offspring 
of  males  of  the  highest  intellect.  For  an  inferior  breed  is 
worse  tban  none.  Higher  education  has,  also,  the  like 
effect  on  the  males  of  fostering  a  conceit  and  presumption 
of  learning  which  runs  to  scepticism  and  unbelief.  They 
who  think  themselves  knowing,  are  always  prone  to  go  to 
the  bottom  of  things,  and  to  overturn  the  handiwork  of 
creation,  told  by  Moses,  and  to  make  creation  do  itself. 
Religious  faith  is  as  important  to  the  paternal  as  to  the 
maternal  being,  and  a  conceit  of  learning  which  impairs  it 
in  the  male,  is  as  destructive  of  the  family  and  of  society 
as  in  the  female. 

The  recent  expoundings  against  the  higher  education 
and  enlarged  sj)here  of  the  female  are  but  a  repetition  of 
the  utterances  of  the  male  for  the  past  six  thousand  or 
sixty  million  years;  all  of  which  was  to  the  end  of  keeping 
the  female  in  subjection.  The  male  has  been  generous  and 
unreserved  in  the  argument,  thinking  its  application  all  on 


234     EVILS  OF   THE   HIGHER  EDUCATION  OF  MALES. 

one  side.  But  when  examined  it  is  found  that  all  the 
argument  of  the  shrinking  and  demoralization  of  the 
family  and  of  society  by  the  higher  education  of  the  female 
is  alike  applicable  to  the  male,  and  that  the  preservation 
of  the  family  and  of  the  race  alike  demands  his  return  to 
the  simplicity  of  nature. 

Then  shall  be  the  equality  of  the  male  and  female, 
which  makes  the  ideal  marriage.  No  more  shall  be  the 
arrogance  of  higher  education  in  one,  and  the  meekness  of 
superstitious  reverence  for  it  in  the  other,  which  is  not  true 
marriage,  but  domination  and  oppression.  Then  shall 
their  minds  run  on  tlie  same  easy  subjects,  and  conversa- 
tion shall  be  unconfined.  Then  no  more  shall  intellectual 
incompatibility  put  asunder  the  twain  who  have  become 
one  flesh.  Then  shall  the  male  find  his  mental  tonic  by 
his  own  hearth,  in  conversing  on  domestic  and  neighborly 
topics,  instead  of  taking  his  higher  education  to  other 
pastures.  The  demonstration  of  the  evils  of  higher  educa- 
tion of  females  has  done  well  in  turning  the  mind  to  the 
same  evil  in  the  males,  which  is  thus  discovered  to  be  a 
chief  cause  of  our  social  ills. 


L. 

WOMAN'S  SUPERTOR  USTTTJITTONS. 

MAN'S  flattering  ascriptions  to  woman  have  alwa3'S  the 
peculiar  quality  that  their  logical  sequence  is  against 
her  cause  of  equal  political,  civil  and  domestic  rights.  This 
unvarying  tendency  ought  to  suggest  to  woman's  perceptive 
mind  that  the  complimentary  attributes  which  man  be- 
stows so  bountifully  and  inexpensively  on  woman  are  Greek 
horse  gifts.  But  woman's  nature  is  so  trusting  to  man 
that  his  flattery  makes  her  his  blind  subject.  She  even 
turns  upon  her  own  defenders,  who  point  out  to  her  the 
effect  of  these  lavish  ascriptions  of  superiority  upon  her 
rights  of  equality. 

These  papers  have  heretofore  remarked  this  course  of 
cunning  stratagem,  and  have  warned  those  devoted  women 
who  are  agitating  the  cause  of  woman's  equal  rights, 
against  the  seeming  support  of  men  who  add  to  the  suffi- 
cient argument  of  woman's  equal  birth  and  capacities,  the 
claim  of  her  superior  spiritual  or  moral  nature,  or  of  any 
other  superiority  because  of  sex.  For  such  claims  fetch 
up  directly  the  argument  that  her  superior  virtue  is  be- 
cause of  her  seclusion  from  affairs,  and  that  her  political 
elevation  will  therefore  be  moral  degradation.  But 
woman's  nature  towards  man  is  so  confiding  that  she  does 
not  recognize  as  friends  the  champions  of  her  political 
equality  when  they  warn  her  against  the  false  flatterers  of 
her  moral  superiority. 

When  woman  asserts  a  superior  spiritual  nature  because 
of  her  sex,  she  pulls  out  the  underpinning  from  the  argu- 
ment of  her  equality,  and  puts  into  the  mouths  of  her 

235 


336  woman's  supekior  intuitions. 

masters  the  argument  tliat  if  she  has  this  superior  virtue, 
society  had  better  let  well  enough  alone,  and  not  drag  her 
down  into  the  affairs  of  the  sex  of  the  lower  moral  order. 
The  most  insidious  of  the  ascriptions  which  man's  cheap 
bounty  has  given  to  woman,  is  that  she  is  superior  to  man 
in  her  intuitions,  and  that  by  instinct  she  jumps  to  right 
conclusions,  while  man's  duller  nature  has  to  Avork  by  a 
laborious  reasoning  process,  and  at  last  is  apt  to  come 
out  wrong. 

Woman  swallowed  this  like  a  young  robin;  she  has 
swallowed  it  for  ages;  she  has  unctioned  her  soul  with  the 
flattery,  all  unconscious  that  man  by  this  places  her  in  the 
lower  order  of  animals,  to  whom  he  ascribes  a  larger  in- 
stinct in  the  place  of  reason.  She  is  all  unconscious  that 
this  is  a  conclusive  argument  against  educating  woman. 
For  through  education  comes  in  the  habit  and  power  of 
reasoning,  which  is  incompatible  with  intuitional  leaps. 
Between  the  two  would  bean  irrepressible  conflict;  instinct 
jumping  to  an  opinion,  and  reason  plodding  after  and  apt 
to  pull  the  other  way.  Torn  by  this  internal  conflict, 
woman  would  be  as  King  Claudius,  the  man  who  loved 
not  wisely  and  too  well  his  brother's  wife,  described  him- 
self: 

Though  intuition  be  as  sharp  as  will, 
Stronger  reason  defeats  my  strong  intent; 
And,  like  a  man  to  double  business  bound, 
I  stand  in  doubt  where  I  shall  first  begin. 
And  both  neglect. 

To  educate  woman  in  that  way  of  systematic  mental 
training  which  develops  reason  is  to  make  a  conflict  or  rea- 
son must  go  to  the  wall.  If  her  intuitional  nature  is  to 
prevail,  then  education  would  be  useless.  If  by  giving  hei 
the  same  education  as  man,  reason  is  to  be  created  in  her 
the  same  as  man's,  then  her  intuitional  nature  must  be  over- 
come.    She  has  to  choose  between  the  two. 


woman's  superior  Intuitions.  237 

Can  woman  afford  to  be  trained  to  reason,  at  the  sacri- 
fice of  the  superior  intuitional  quality?  Can  society  afford 
to  lose  this  spiritual  guidance  of  woman  for  the  sake  of 
such  reason  as  man's  education  produces?  On  the  other 
hand,  is  woman's  sexual  superiority  of  intuitional  percep- 
tions in  the  affairs  of  herself,  her  family,  and  thecommun- 
it}',  such  that  in  order  to  keep  this  spiritual  faculty  unim- 
paired, she  can  afford  to  forego  systematic  training  of  the 
mind? 

The  question  is  a  serious  one.  Indeed,  it  involves  a 
crisis  to  society.  Thus  far  has  it  come  with  the  saving 
element  of  woman's  quick  spiritual  intuitive  perceptions  in 
one-half  the  race,  and  tliis  half  paramount  in  inlluence  in 
the  domestic  sphere,  and  with  the  saving  element  of  the 
slower  and  less  trustworthy  reasoning  faculty  in  the  other 
half.  But  now  it  is  proposed  to  extinguish  the  hitherto 
superior  saving  element  by  training  woman's  mind  to  the 
same  reasoning  methods  as  man's,  by  giving  her  the  same 
education  as  man.  The  experiment  is  of  tremendous  mag- 
nitude. 

The  question  is  made  more  difficult  by  the  blindness 
of  even  the  strong-minded  women  to  the  consequences, 
and  by  their  intuitive  inability  to  distinguish  the  true 
champions  of  woman's  equal  rights  from  the  designing 
flatterers  of  her  superior  nature.  She  fondly  thinks  that 
she  is  to  form  reason  like  man's  by  man's  form  of  educa- 
tioTi,  and  still  is  to  retain  her  faculty  of  leaping  to  conclu- 
sions by  instinct.  In  like  illogical  manner  she  asserts  her 
equal  political  rights  by  a  claim  of  the  superior  virtue 
which  she  keeps  by  her  seclusion  from  affairs. 

The  failure  of  woman's  intuitions  to  discern  among 
men  the  true  advocates  of  her  equal  rights  from  these  who 
fasten  her  chains  by  ascriptions  of  superior  virtues,  is  the 
most  disheartening  element  in  this  cause.     It  is  probable 


238  woman's  superior  intuitions. 

that  she  would  resent  a  demonstration  that  all  this  ascrip- 
tion of  a  finer  intuitional  nature  to  woman  is  a  fiction. 
She  would  cling  to  this,  although  it  classes  her  with  the  an- 
imals that  have  not  reasoning  souls,  and  although  it  is  an 
invincible  argument  against  educating  her. 

But  is  there  any  reality  in  this  attribute  of  a  superior 
intuitional  nature  to  woman?  Do  the  men  who  repeat 
this  old  fallacy  act  upon  it?  Do  they  think  their  wives  less 
ajjt  to  be  duped  by  the  sharpers  in  all  sorts  of  guises?  Do 
they  find  intuitions  of  wives  and  daughters  trusty  guides 
in  discerning  character  in  man  and  woman?  Are  they 
willing  to  let  a  designing  villain  roam  in  their  families, 
trusting  to  this  female  intuition  to  detect  him?  When  the 
shepherd  of  the  flock  is  found  to  be  a  wolf,  is  it  not  invari- 
ably discovered  that  he  has  long  been  duping  the  ewes  and 
she  lambs?  Where  were  then  these  unerring  female  intui- 
tions? And  when  the  wolf  is  exposed,  who  are  they  that 
still  cling  to  him?  The  ewes  and  lambs  with  the  unerring 
intuitions.  In  what  line  does  the  medical  mountebank  find 
success  so  easy  as  in  the  specialty  of  female  complaints? 

This  ascription  to  woman,  which  has  stood  for  ages 
unchallenged,  will  not  bear  scientific  examination  for  a 
moment.  It  falls  to  j^ieces  at  the  touch  of  reason.  But 
it  ought  to  be  discarded  and  resented  by  woman  because 
it  classes  her  with  those  lower  animals  to  whom,  by  man's 
confession,  reason  has  been  denied.  The  saddest  thing  in 
this  however,  is  that  she  will  cling  to  this  degrading  flat- 
tery, and  will  resent  the  exposure  of  its  true  character. 


LI. 

INTELLECTUAL  BREEDING. 

IS  IT  just  to  charge  the  feeble  intellects  of  men  to  the  luck 
of  education  of  the  mothers  ?  A  New  York  paper  lias 
done  this,  in  its  commendation  of  the  admission  of  females 
to  the  public  examinations  of  the  Cambridge  (Kiiglaud) 
University.  This  charge  calls  to  mind  a  little  incident  in 
the  Garden  of  Eden,  now  for  the  first  time  used  as  a 
literary  simile,  in  which  he  said,  "  She  gave  me  and  I  did 
eat."     Saith  this  accusing  editor  : 

**  Mankind  does  not  expect  a  millenium,  but  the  world 
will  have  taken  some  steps  toward  it  when  a  stronger  and 
wider  education  comes  to  lift  women  out  of  the  pettiness 
of  gossi]}  and  dress.  With  wiser  mothers  will  come  wiser 
sons." 

Here  is  an  imputation  that  the  foolishness  of  sons  is  be- 
cause of  lack  of  college  education  of  the  motliers.  Is  there 
any  ground  for  this  grave  charge  ?  Comparatively  few  men 
are  college  educated,  and  these  do  not  distinguisli  them- 
selves by  begetting  wise  sons.  The  ranks  of  the  literate 
have  to  be  recruited  from  the  illiterate,  to  keep  up  the 
stamina.  But  we  pass  by  the  physiological  question,  to 
treat  of  the  fact  of  this  grave  reflection  on  women.  They 
that  watch  over  the  welfare  of  mankind  have  remarked  the 
better  culture  of  tlie  daughters  of  this  generation  tlian  of 
the  sons,  and  the  philosophical  mind  has  inquired  whether 
this  does  not  threaten  man's  supremacy. 

It  is  true  that  some  boys  go  through  college  witli  the 
usual  uncertainty  as  to  its  bringing  forth  any  positive  ca- 
pacity.    If  these  then  go  onto  the  study  of  a  profession 

239 


240  IKTELLECTtJAL  BREEDING. 

which  is  of  an  intellectual  nature,  and  if  tliey  pursue  it 
capably,  they  have  perhaps  a  larger  education  than  is  avail- 
able to  woman,  save  under  difficulties.  If,  however,  the 
college  boy  ceases  his  education  at  that  point,  and  thinks 
he  is  educated,  as  is  frequent,  the  college  is  wasted  on  him, 
and  he  remains  fixed  in  the  conceit  of  a  small  mind.  But 
in  the  greater  number  of  the  sons  and  daughters  of  respect- 
able people,  the  boys  leave  school  earlier  than  the  girls. 
Of  the  ninety-six  graduates  of  the  Cincinnati  high  schools 
in  1879,  fifty-four  were  girls.  Of  the  number  that  entered 
the  high  schools,  519  were  boys,  565  girls.  More  girls  than 
boys  reached  the  top  grade  of  the  intermediate  schools. 

In  the  school  report  for  the  city  of  Hamilton,  0.,  for 
1880,  of  tlie  nine  graduates  of  the  high  school  eight  are 
girls;  also  of  the  number  entered  in  the  first  year  of  the 
course,  thirty  were  girls  and  seven  boys.  A  similar  dis- 
parity is  observed  in  the  upper  grades  of  the  district  schools. 
Tiiese  high  schools  furnish  a  sufficient  foundation  of  edu- 
cation for  those  Avho  have  the  zeal  to  go  forward.  College 
can  do  little  for  those  who  have  not  the  zeal  to  go  beyond. 
A  feature  of  much  significance  is  furnished  by  the  Ham- 
ilton report,  which  gives  the  occupation  of  the  parents  of 
the  high  school  pupils,  showing  that  of  the  eighty-two 
fathers,  eighteen  are  mechanics  and  laborers,  twenty-one 
unclassified,  twenty-two  "small  tradesmen,"  eight  farmers, 
five  merchants,  and  eight  professionals.  Thus  the  same 
higher  education  of  girls  than  of  boys  is  reaching  the 
daughters  of  the  unskilled  laborers. 

But  this  is  only  a  small  part  of  the  disparity  in  the 
education  of  the  girls  and  boys  of  tliis  generation.  In 
general,  intellectual  culture  ceases  with  the  boys  when 
they  leave  school,  but  with  the  girls  of  what  are  called  so- 
ciety people,  and  of  all  that  are  in  middling  circumstances, 
there  is  a  general  practice  of  continuing  culture  in  a  vari- 


INTELLECTUAL  BREEDING.   ,         241 

ety  of  ways.  "With  yoimg  women  this  supplies  the  mental 
occupation  which  young  men  find  in  smoking,  drinking, 
and  vapid  talk  in  public  resorts.  A  very  serious  social 
question  is,  where  are  the  young  women  to  find  the  society 
of  intellectual  young  men?  It  is  a  matter  of  common  re- 
mark that  the  young  men  of  the  day  are  not  cultured,  and 
that  contemporary  young  women  are  their  intellectual 
superiors. 

Education,  in  men,  has  not  now  that  social  rank  which 
it  had  when  there  was  not  so  mucli  gratis  schooling.  Tiie 
boys  of  people  in  middling  circumstances,  and  of  those 
that  are  called  society,  drop  out  of  school  young,  to  enter 
some  kind  of  light  and  genteel  employment,  to  support 
extravagant  habits,  while  the  girls  of  the  same  class  keep 
on.  The  sons  do  not  observe  that  this  loses  them  anything 
in  society  estimation,  and  they  have  little  incentive  to  pur- 
sue any  sort  of  intellectual  exercise.  But  culture  is  more 
esteemed  .by  the  daughters  and  mothers,  and  as  they  look 
for  their  enjoyment  in  the  domestic  circle,  rather  than  in 
places  of  public  resort,  they  have  more  time  aiul  incentive 
to  pursue  it.  Ideas  are  degenerating  to  the  acceptation  that 
women  are  the  cultured  part  of  the  race,  and  that  to  be 
male  is  all  that  man  can  be  expected  to  contribute  to  intel- 
lectual society. 

If  higher  education  of  the  future  mothers  is  requisite  to 
the  breeding  of  more  intellectual  sons,  how  much  more  the 
higher  education  of  the  future  fathers!  Does  not  the 
moral  and  intellectual  state  of  the  father  have  as  much 
bearing  on  jjrogeny  as  of  the  mother?  According  to  all  the 
known  facts  of  physiology,  does  it  not  have  more  influence? 
The  sufl;rage  platforms  have  set  forth  the  proposition  that 
it  is  necessary  that  woman  should  vote  in  order  to  be  states- 
men in  order  to  breed  statesmen,  and  that  without  this  the 
breed  of  statesmen  will  run  out.  There  is  plausibility  iu 
16 


242  INTELLECTUAL  BREEDING. 

this.  Indeed,  that  there  ever  were  any  statesmen  is  illogi- 
cal, but  as  to  laying  of  the  weak  minds  of  sons  to  the 
lack  of  culture  in  women,  the  boot  is  on  the  other  leg  —  to 
use  a  homely  metaphor. 


LII. 
LOVE  AND  ISa^SIC. 

AN  AFFAIR  of  misplaced  love  in  a  neighboring  town 
has  caused  hearts  to  ache  in  several  families;  has 
broken  down  the  good  position  of  a  man  who  has  been 
faithful  in  a  place  of  trust,  and  who  was  otherwise  an  exem- 
plary church  member  and  was  leader  of  the  choir;  has 
forced  him  to  abandon  wife  and  children  and  the  property 
which  he  had  patiently  earned  to  go  into  exile,  and  has  de- 
stroyed the  fortunes  of  a  girl  who  appears  to  have  striven 
vainly  against  this  misplaced  affection.  Except  in  the  dis- 
closure of  the  struggles  of  each  against  the  passion,  and 
the  girl's  honest  confession  of  the  unhappy  love,  while 
denying  all  bodily  offense,  and  the  man's  honesty  in  trans- 
ferring all  his  property  to  his  wife  and  departing  alone, 
this  crossing  of  love  is  not  so  uncommon  as  to  be  remarked 
for  its  strangeness.  But  there  is  matter  of  serious  solici- 
tude to  the  citizens  of  this  metropolis  of  music  culture,  in  the 
statement  of  the  Directors  of  the  institution  in  whicli  tliia 
unfortunate  man  held  a  high  trust,  that  "  the  only  thing  of 
which  they  complained  was  his  extreme  fondness  for  music," 
to  which  the  narrator  adds  this  reflection:  ''A  fondness 
which  the  sequel  will  show  proved  his  ruin.' 

What  the  sequel  does  show  is  the  young  woman's  nar- 
rative that  the  proximity  by  which  she  caught  her  infatua- 
tion was  in  the  choir  of  the  Methodist  church,  of  which  he 
was  leader,  and  in  rehearsing  for  the  May  Music  Festival 
of  the  Vicinage.  If  musical  concord  brings  sympathy  of 
feeling,  if  the  melodious  responses  of  tenor  and  soprano 
awake  responses  of  the  heart;  if  joining  in  the  harmonies 

243 


244  LOVE  AND  MtJSlC. 

of  song  harmonizes  the  affections,,  and  lifts  up  the  soul 
above  conjugal  pledges,  then  are  our  citizens,  by  their  ex- 
cessive devotion  to  high  musical  culture,  destroying  their 
family  relations  and  placing  in  peril  that  oft-imperiled 
structure,  the  framework  of  society.  If  this  were  true, 
then  would  the  innocent-looking  throng  of  students  at  our 
great  College  of  Music  be  entered  on  the  broad  way  of 
ruin.  If  this  were  true,  then  should  we  raze  our  great 
Music  Hall  to  its  base  as  another  Tower  of  Babel,  by  which 
men  wrought  the  dissolution  of  society  by  aspiring  to 
greater  heights. 

But  happily  we  are  able  to  quench  this  alarm  by  show- 
ing that  high  musical  culture,  instead  of  inordinately  devel- 
oping the  feelings,  emotions,  susceptibilities,  tend  to 
eliminate  them.  The  most  uncultivated  are  they  that 
are  most  suspectible  to  melody.  That  concord  of 
notes  which  is  called  harmony  strikes  the  natural  ear. 
The  sensibility  to  this  is  born.  The  emotions  of  the  un- 
cultured are  most  wrought  upon  by  these  properties  of 
music,  and  therefore  the  danger  of  its  stirring  up  respon- 
sive affections,  and  setting  them  awry,  is  greatest  with 
least  culture.  But  high  culture  in  music  eliminates  mel- 
ody and  harmony,  and  dries  up  the  natural  susceptibility 
to  them.  High  culture  therefore  transcends  the  feelings 
and  rises  to  pure  music — that  is  to  say,  to  pure  art — which 
is  purified  from  both  melody  and  harmony. 

This  is  not  merely  our  own  opinion — although  that 
alone  would  be  infallible — nor  merely  the  observation  of 
music  execution,  but  it  is  stated  by  high  writers  on  music. 
Not  long  ago  an  article  in  the  Atlantic  told  how  musicians 
enjoy  music,  and  showed  that  it  is  wholly  above  the  suscep- 
tibility to  such  simple  elements  as  melody  and  harmony. 
It  spoke  contemptously  of  the  unsophisticated  ear  to  which 
the  note  of  the  ^olian  harp  is  pleasing,  and  alike  pitifully 


LOVE  A^■D  iiusic.  245 

of  the  childish  who  are  pleased  with  simple  harmony.  It 
showed  that  the  way  iiiusiciaiis  enjoy  music  is  not  musi- 
cal, but  artistic,  such  as  a  critical  observation  of  some  par- 
ticular phrase  of  the  composition;  just  as  the  anatomist 
finds  most  interest  in  the  dry  skeleton,  while  the  unlearned 
most  admire  the  simple  beauty  of  form,  color,  ami  expres- 
sion in  the  flesh. 

A  like  working  of  high  culture  may  be  observed  in  the 
other  arts — for  example,  in  sculpture.  (J reck  sculpture 
reached  its  highest  in  representing  the  human  form.  A 
remarkable  example  of  the  energy  of  a  new  country  and 
free  and  equal  birth  in  creating  gen: us  for  art  is  seen  in  the 
incidents  that  whenever  our  people  take  up  any  art  their 
native  talent  transcends  the  classic  works.  No  sooner 
have  we  formed  a  school  of  sculpture  upon  classic  models 
than  our  American  genius  risesabove  the  mechanical  imag- 
ing of  the  human  form,  and  expands  its  wings  to  the  mod- 
eling of  a  multitude  of  forms  for  the  decoration  of  pottery, 
Avails,  frames,  furniture,  and  so  on — forms  which  merely 
suggest  real  objects  Avithout  mechanically  imitating  any. 
The  sculptor's  art  reaches  a  higher  development  in  the 
plasterer's  art,  and  we  continually  have  to  reconstruct  our 
p-rt  schools,  and  lift  them  up  to  the  flights  of  our  native 
genius. 

There  is  a  profoundly  logical  maxim  that  the  exception 
proves  the  rule.  The  exceptional  departure  of  love  in  this 
church  choir  proves  the  rule  that  choirs  are  secure  against 
such  straying  of  hearts.  All  that  have  Avhen  young  served 
a  term  in  a  choir,  know  that  the  oflice  of  praise,  of  Avhich 
these  are  priests  and  priestesses  for  the  congregation,  im- 
presses such  solemnity  that  they  have  no  susceptibility  to 
the  personal  feelings.  Even  if  it  were  not  so,  and  if 
choirs  were  the  hotbeds  for  the  growth  of  love,  this  could 
be  turned  to  good  Avork  _^by  udmitting  only  marriageable 


246  LOVE  AND  MUSIC. 

persons  to  the  office  of  worship.  For  the  great  object  of 
creation  is  that  the  earth  may  be  peoj)led.  All  that  pre- 
pares the  way  to  this  chief  purpose  are  entitled  to  preced- 
ence in  any  time  and  place.  Calling  this  sad  event  an  ex- 
ception, it  proves  the  rule  that  church  choirs,  although 
their  music  culture  is  not  high  enough  to  have  ex- 
tinguished the  natural  feelings,  are  safe  places  to  let  them 
out,  if  rightly  directed.  But,  as  we  have  shown,  a  higher 
culture  eliminates  from  music  all  that  touches  uj^on  the 
emotions,  and  is  thereby  a  protection,  instead  of  a  peril,  in 
matters  of  the  heart. 

Even  in  the  less  high  stages  of  music  cultivation  lifts 
it  out  of  the  primitive  emotions  by  directing  the  effort 
wholly  to  execution.  He  or  she  that  is  striving  to  attain 
to  that  which  shall  give  most  effect  naturally  loses  suscep- 
tibility. Thus  do  we  prove  that  high  musical  culture,  such 
as  is  generally  diffused  among  our  citizens,  removes  the 
dangers  of  the  indulgence  of  simple  musical  sensibilities  — 
that  it  removes  the  danger  that  musical  sympathies  shall 
cause  the  affections  to  go  astray,  and  that  in  reality  it  pro- 
tects the  family  relations,  and  braces  up  the  framework  of 
society. 


LIII. 
UNEVEN"  GROWTH  OF  MAN  AND  WIFE. 

AN  intellectual  disparity  is  of  ten  remarked  between  man 
and  wife,  by  which  they  seem  mismated.  Society 
commiserates  the  man  who  has  the  lack  of  intellectual 
society  at  home,  and  it  excuses  him  for  seeking  it  abroad, 
which  is  apt  to  cause  domestic  unpleasantness.  Naturally 
the  simple  and  honest  argument  is  that  he  made  his  own 
choice  of  an  intellectual  companion,  and  can  not  go  back 
from  it;  that  he  judged  for  himself  how  much  mind  he 
wanted  in  a  wife,  and  that  if  he  chose  a  weak  one  it  is  be- 
cause he  wanted  to  be  the  superior  in  order  to  dominate 
her  mind  as  the  law  enables  him  to  do  in  his  station. 

Man,  according  to  his  nature,  wants  not  that  his  wife 
shall  be  mentally  superior  to  himself.  Her  inferiority  is 
no  call  for  pity  to  him,  even  if  his  caution  has  overdone  it. 
But  there  is  a  commonly  received  argument  which  sets 
aside  all  this,  and  alleges  that  the  wife  ceases  to  grow 
intellectually,  but  the  man  keeps  on;  that  the  intercourse 
of  the  man  with  men  in  business  affairs  and  public  affairs, 
and  especially  in  the  brain-developing  affairs  of  our  poli- 
tics, carries  him  on  in  growth  of  mind,  while  his  wife,  con- 
fined in  domestic  concerns,  and  in  a  large  degree  to  the 
society  of  women  and  children.,  ceases  intellectual  develop- 
ment, and  thus  they  grow  apart,  and  are  not,  in  fact,  the 
two  whom  the  forms  of  law  joined  together. 

This  sounds  plausible,  and  it  is  often  uttered  in  abate- 
ment for  the  man  when  his  socking  intellectual  equality 
away  from  home  has  led  to  attachments  not  regarded  as 
wholly  intellectual.     A  curiosity  in  this  is  that  the  man  in 


248  UNEVEN   GROWTH  OF  MAN  AND  WIFE. 

his  daily  and  nightly  intercourse  does  not  take  the  wife 
with  him  in  this  progress.  Oral  discourse  is  the  most 
effective  mode  of  imparting  instruction.  There  are  pro- 
fessions in  which  diplomas  are  taken  by  hearing  lectures. 
The  wife  is  subject  to  his  conversing  and  his  orating,  in  the 
early  morning  hour,  at  meals;  and  in  the  still  hours  of  the 
night.  She  sits  as  a  jaupil  at  his  feet.  She  listens  in  admir- 
ation to  words  of  knowledge  from  his  'expanding  mind. 
She  is  naturally  anxious  to  keep  pace  with  him.  How  is 
it  that  all  this  continual  rain  of  words  of  wisdom  runs  away 
from  her  like  water  from  a  duck's  back? 

But  although  strange  to  such  as  know  the  didactic  habit 
of  the  man  and  the  teachable  spirit  of  the  wife,  this  growth 
into  a  mental  disparity  is  accepted  as  a  fact,  and  it  is 
undertaken  to  be  explained  by  the  averment;  that  while  the 
man  is  engaged  in  the  large  and  expanding  affairs  of  busi- 
ness, the  wife  is  engaged  in  mere  household  cares  and  in 
bearing  and  rearing  the  children,  all  of  which  keeps  her 
mind  at  a  standstill.  This  assumes  that  the  affairs  of  the 
household  are  not  so  important  as  those  of  the  bread-win- 
ning business;  that  they  are  small  and  dwarfing  in  their 
influence;  that  child  bearing  and  raising  is  a  part  of  the 
same  domestic  confinement  to  things  which  dwarf  the 
mind. 

That  the  two  whom — as  the  marriage  form  has  it — God 
hath  joined  together  should  grow  apart  by  the  necessary 
diversity  of  their  vocations,  seems  to  make  marriage  a 
failure.  It  represents  that  a  couple  who,  when  joined  in 
wedlock,  are  made  one  in  flesh  and  person,  as  they  are  one 
in  soul  and  heart — two  souls  with  but  a  single  thought, 
two  hearts  that  beat  as  one  —  begin  from  that  time  to 
grow  apart  into  two  souls  with  great  disparity  in  thought, 
two  hearts  that  beat  out  of  time,  two  persons  and  two 
diverse  fleshes;    and  all  this  by  the  necessity  of  married 


UKEVEN   GROWTH   OF  MAN   AND  WIFE.  249 

life,  which  assigns  one  to  exterior  business,  and  the  other 
to  the  interior  concerns  of  the  houseliold.  Thus  it  is  rep- 
resented that  deligence  in  their  respective  duties  works 
their  separation  in  mind. 

How  shall  they  whom  God  has  joined  together  be  kept 
from  growing  asunder?  To  bo  legally  unlocked  is  not  all 
of  divorce.  The  substance  of  divorce  has  come  in  when  a 
disparity  in  intellectual  progress  has  brought  a  separation 
in  mind.  How  shall  this  inevitable  tendency  of  marriage 
to  separation  by  the  evolution  from  the  liomogeneous  to 
the  heterogeneous  be  changed  to  a  growth  to  a  more  perfect 
union?  Prevention  seems  a  vital  necessity  to  save  marriage. 
This  is  a  subject  for  the  serious  consideration  of  tlie  Oliio 
anti-Divorce  League.  Perhaps  that  worthy  society  may 
proceed  more  scientifically  by  investigating  the  causes  of 
the  separation  Avhich  cause  parties  to  ask  for  legal  divorce, 
than  by  narrowing  the  divorce  statutes.  ' 

How  can  this  unevenness  in  the  mental  growth  of  man 
and  wife  be  prevented  ?  The  difference  in  the  occupations 
of  man  and  wife  is  alleged  as  the  chief  cause.  This 
appears  without  remedy  save  by  relieving  the  wife  from  the 
household  cares  and  taking  her  into  the  business  affairs 
and  public  life  of  the  husband.  Tlie  woman  suffragists 
argue  that  equal  rights  and  the  exercise  of  political  privil- 
eges will  give  the  wife  an  equal  enlargement  of  mind,  so 
that  her  progress  will  be  an  equal  pace.  But  politics  are 
but  a  small  part  of  living  except  to  a  select  few.  And  the 
averment  that  the  household  cares  of  the  wife  are  lower 
than  the  business  of  man,  and,  therefore,  that  they  keep 
her  mentally  inferior  to  him,  puts  out  of  the  question  any 
possibility  of  real  equality  of  the  wife  without  abandoning 
her  vocations  of  household  things,  child-bearing  and  child- 
raising  and  the  rest. 

This  disease  of  growing  into  mental  incompatibility 


250  UNEVEi^^   GROWTH   OF   MAN   AND   AVIFB. 

appears  to  be  modern.  It  is  not  read  of  in  the  books  of 
antiquity.  No  mention  is  made  of  it  in  the  Bible  patri- 
archs. But  j^erhaps  this  is  because  the  additional  wives 
which  they  took  on  were  according  to  their  advanced  stages 
of  intellectual  developement.  This  left  the  elder  wives  to 
the  household  drudgery  while  providing  the  man  with  his 
higher  intellectual  tonic  in  the  fresh  aunexings.  It  is 
strange  that  it  has  arisen  with  the  more  general  education 
of  woman,  and  with  her  demand  for  equal  rights.  Another 
and  a  worse  paradox  is  that  while  she  demands  equal  rights 
upon  the  claim  of  her  equal  abilities,  she  alleges  an  infer- 
iority because  of  the  lower  degree  of  her  vocations  as  to 
those  of  man,  which  makes  essential  that  she  shall  be 
relieved  from  these  as  the  first  step  to  the  attainment  of 
equal  abilities  and  equal  rights. 

This  is  only  another  measure  of  the  revolution  which 
the  coming  triumph  of  woman's  cause  is  to  make  in  all  the 
social  relations.  The  right  can  abide  the  consequences 
without  apprehension.  If  it  shall  be  found  that  the  yoke 
of  wedlock  is  irreconcilable  with  the  independent  career 
of  woman,  or  that  the  consigning  of  the  most  active  pe- 
riod of  her  life  to  the  practice  of  maternity  cuts  her  off 
from  such  a  chance  for  a  career  as  is  open  to  man,  or  that 
household  occupations  dwarf  her  intellectual  growth;  and 
thereby  consign  her  to  an  inferior  state,  she  must  be  eman- 
cipated from  them.  Woman's  equal  rights  mean  liberty 
and  all  which  that  implies.  She  is  not  going  to  take  it  in 
fetters,  and  to  receive  privileges  doled  out  to  her  in  limited 
measure,  to  keep  her  where  she  is,  but  she  will  have  that 
entire  freedom  which  shall  make  her  master  of  her  own 
destiny. 


LIV. 

THE  RIGHTS  OF  WOMEN  OF  SIXTY. 

WOMAN  is  so  wonted  and  subdued  to  the  entire  of  tlie 
disabilities  which  man  has  heaped  upon  her  tlirough 
the  ages,  that  her  revolt  is  hardly  to  be  looked  for  against  a 
mere  detail  which  puts  a  limitation  on  the  age  at  which 
she  may  be  susceptible  to  love  which  is  no  limitation  to 
him.  Else  would  she  rise  up  and  sjieak  out  against  the 
assumption  of  the  general  commentary  on  the  Burdett 
Coutts-Bartlett  marriage,  that  it  is  abnormal  and  improper 
for  a  woman  of  sixty  to  marry;  still  more  to  marry  a  man 
of  thirty-two. 

Why  is  it  abnormal  and  improper  that  a  woman  of 
sixty  should  marry?  Is  it  that  she  is  too  old  to  love?  Let 
the  women  of  sixty  who  say  they  are  too  old  to  love,  rise 
up  and  fling  stones  at  her.  She  would  be  in  no  danger  of 
being  stoned.  It  is  that  she  is  too  old  to  be  loved.  Let 
men  who  have  wives  of  sixty  say  that  to  their  faces,  and 
give  them  the  reason  why. 

Is  the  argument  that  this  is  not  love  such  as  runs  in 
what  the  pious  hymn  calls  ''the  heat  of  youthful  blood," 
and  that  it  is  more  intellectual  than  animal;  is  that  reason? 
Rather  does  it  not  exalt  the  quality  of  the  love  of  a  woman 
of  sixty?  Men  join  in  this  defamation.  But  no  man  of 
sixty  will  admit  to  himself  that  he  is  incapable  of  love. 
Observation  makes  this  a  susceptible  age  in  man.  His  put- 
ting this  limitation  on  woman  is  therefore  only  his  custom 
of  putting  all  sorts  of  disabilities  on  her,  which  he  takes 
not  upon  himself. 

May  not  a  woman  of  sixty  be  admirable  in  character, 
251 


25%  THE  RIGHTS  OF  AVOMEN   OF   SIXTY, 

mind,  disposition  and  person  ?  Even  if  her  charms  of  per- 
sonal form  have  begun  to  wither,  yet  to  make  that  an  argu- 
ment that  she  is  incapable  of  loving  or  being  loved,  would 
put  love  oh  a  very  material  basis. 

May  she  not  be  capable  of  giving  and  receiving  all  the 
enjoyments  of  companionship  Avith  man?  May  she  not 
enjoy  them  as  highly  and  rationally  as  at  any  age,  and 
does  she  not  appreciate  them  better  and  need  them  as  well 
as*  the  girl  who  is  giddy  with  animal  spirits  and  a  light 
head?  Is  not  a  cultured  woman  of  sixty  more  intellect- 
ually attractive  than  when  she  was  at  the  age  at  which  it  is 
thought  a  girl  ought  to  be  caught  in  wedlock!  Surely 
these  are  things  which  make  marriage  honorable  and  fitting 
and  happy. 

Suppose  the  argument  bo  tliat  this  can  not  be  the  hot 
love  of  youth,  but  that  it  can  be  only  esteem,  friendship, 
kindness,  rational  affection,  and  soon:  are  there  not  mar- 
ried persons  who  started  in  wedlock  young  with  what  they 
thought  was  love  to  die  for,  who  can  now  say  that  they 
would  be  contented  if  they  had  esteem,  respect,  friendship, 
companionship,  kindness,  and  so  on? 

To  say  that  a  woman  of  sixty  can  not  have  the  physi- 
ological, spiritual,  emotional,  or  whatever  the  proj)erty 
may  be,  to  sanctify  marriage  as  "  God's  holy  ordinance," 
is  to  unsanctify  the  marriage  of  all  that  have  arrived  at 
this  age,  and  to  degrade  it  into  a  mere  lingering  and  drag- 
ging out  of  wedlock  after  the  soul  of  it  has  departed.  If 
logic  be  logic,  she  that  is  capable  of  keeping  and  continu- 
ing love  in  married  life  at  the  age  of  sixty,  is  capable  of 
taking  it  on  afresh  in  case  of  a  vacancy. 

When  a  woman  of  sixty  has  found  in  a  man  of  thirty- 
two  the  qualities  which  she  admires  and  desires,  why  should 
the  difference  in  ages  prevent  love  and  marriage?  A  man 
of  sixty  is  liable  to  take  a  woman  of  thirty-two  and  under, 


THE   RIGHTS   OF  WOMEN   OF  SIXTY  253 

and  it  is  thought  the  natural  order  for  a  man.  Men  thin 
tliis  the  way  of  man.  And  women  think  tliat  tlie  maid  of 
tliirty-two  wlio  marries  a  man  of  sixty  does  a  good  tiling, 
and  a  still  better  thing  if  he  can  leave  the  wherewith  to 
console  her  affliction  when  he  ascends  the  golden  stairs. 
Wiiat  makes  the  difference?  Is  there  more  intellectual 
parity  in  a  man  of  sixty  and  a  woman  of  thirty-two  than  in 
the  vice-versa?  This  would  be  contrary  to  the  general 
rating  of  man  and  woman.  Is  there  more  physiological 
parity  than  in  the  vice-versa  case?  Who  can  tell?  Can 
they  who  put  this  disability  on  woman  give  a  physiological; 
psychological  or  intellectual  cause  for  it? 

May  not  a  man  of  thirty-two  who  from  his  youth  up 
has  known  a  great  a  noble  woman,  a  benefactress  to  man- 
kind, esteem,  honor  and  admire  her  in  the  highest  degree, 
enjoy  her  society,  feel  honored  by  her  preference  and  grate- 
ful for  her  bounty,  and  love  her  above  all  women?  Let 
those  who  deny  this  define  the  quality  of  the  love  whose 
lack  makes  this  marriage  unfitting. 

Is  love  a  soul-union?  Poets  and  young  lovers  think 
this  the  highest  ascription.  The  soul  has  an  existence 
which  makes  the  term  of  twenty-eight  years  an  inconsid- 
able  speck.  A  difference  of  twenty-eight  years  in  the 
eternity  of  two  souls  is  so  small  that  the  mind  can  not  take 
it  in.  May  not  the  soul  of  sixty  and  the  soul  of  thirty- 
two  have  but  a  single  thought,  when  both  are  bent  on  it? 
May  not  their  two  hearts  beat  as  one,  while  they  are  kept 
up  to  concert  pitch?  Is  marriage  a  oneness  of  the  flesh, 
as  the  Scripture  has  it?  Then  the  two  are  one  flesh,  and 
no  disparity  of  ages  remains.  The  resultant  age  is  the 
average  of  the  two.  The  oneness  of  sixty  and  thirty-two 
is  exactly  forty-six  years,  which  is  hardly  up  to  that  mov- 
able period  which  is  called  middle  age,  and  is  a  good 
enough  time  to  marry  either  man  or  woman.     Thus  it  is 


254  THE   EIGHTS   OF   WOMEN   OF   SIXTY. 

seen  that  when  this  proscription  of  women  of  sixty  is 
brought  to  the  test  of  logic,  Scripture  and  arithmetic,  it 
is  found  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  it. 

Do  the  women  assume  that  if  a  woman  of  thirty-two 
marries  a  man  of  sixty,  there  is  no  love  on  her  part?  Do 
they  assume  that  she  has  married  to  get  a  situation,  or  that 
she  is  speculating  on  his  remains?  On  the  contrary,  is  it 
not  the  common  acceptation  that  a  girl  may  love  a  man 
twice  or  thrice  her  age  enough  to  marry  him,  if  his  circum- 
stances are  adequate? 

Young  single  women  may  have  joined  in  this  censure 
on  their  elder  sister  for  marrying  a  young  man,  in  a 
thoughtless  calculation  of  their  own  interest;  but  the  re- 
flection that  they  are  traveling  the  road  to  the  sixties  will 
convince  them  that  their  true  interest  lies  in  maintaining 
the  right  of  women  to  love  and  marriage  without  limita- 
tion of  age. 

American  women  should  rise  up  with  more  spirit  to 
vindicate  this  marriage,  because  the  Queen  has  taken  a 
conspicuous  occasion  to  manifest  her  disapproval  of  it, 
and  this  has  excluded  the  eminent  woman  and  great  public 
benefactor  from  the  court  receptions.  This  ill-mannered 
freak  of  the  Queen  does  not  turn  one  hair  white  or  black, 
nor  change  any  moral  aspect  of  the  affair.  Has  she  turn- 
ed her  back  on  any  of  the  young  brides  of  old  nobles?  has 
she  snubbed  any  of  the  old  nobles  who  have  married  girls 
of  less  than  half  their  years?  This  settles  the  rationality 
of  her  demonstration  of  ill-temper  in  this  case.  She  has 
had  her  chance ;  what  right  or  fairness  is  there  in  her  say- 
ing that  the  Burdett-Coutts  should  not  have  hers  ?  Is  it 
because  she  deferred  it  too  long  ?  She  is  the  only  compe- 
tent judge  of  that.  The  political  station  and  environment 
of  the  Queen  bar  her  from  love  at  sixty  ;  because  she  is 
fettered  she  would  put  fetters  on  all  women.     There  is  an 


THE   EIGHTS   OF  WOMEX   OF  SIXTY.  255 

applicable  parable  of  a  fox  who  proposed  that  all  foxes 
should  be  curtailed  because  he  happened  to  lose  his  tail  in 
a  trap. 

A  great  j)rinciple  is  in  this  matter — a  principle  which 
is  even  higher  than  the  high  rule  that  woman  should  keep 
available  all  the  chances  in  the  contingencies  of  her  life  — 
the  principle  of  woman's  equality  of  rights  with  man; 
a  principle  which  is  infracted  by  any  unequal  limitations 
imposed  on  women  in  the  aifairs  of  love  and  marriage;  a 
principle  which  requires  of  women  the  exercise  of  tliat 
eternal  vigilance  which  is  ever  the  cost  of  liberty;  a  vigil- 
ance which  discerns  in  this  attempt  to  put  on  woman  a 
limitation  of  age  in  the  affairs  of  love,  which  is  not  put  on 
man,  a  part  of  that  design  and  system  which  all  down  the 
ages  has  piled  disabilities  on  woman  until  both  man  and 
woman  have  come  to  think  that  her  condition  of  subjection 
is  the  order  of  nature. 


THE  CHAPERON  QUESTION". 

A  CITY  fashionable  preacher  preaches  that  the  American 
girls  are  going  to  rack  and  ruin  by  going  their  gait 
without  chaperonage.  He  had  visited  Europe  and  found 
that  they  do  things  differently.  Such  opening  of  the  eyes 
to  native  nakedness  comes  from  culture  by  the  European 
tour.  In  like  manner  when  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  know- 
ledge had  opened  the  eyes  of  our  first  parents,  they  saw 
that  they  had  no  clothes  on.  Also  the  demi- American 
novel  has  set  forth  this  native  want  in  a  dreadful  way, 
by  an  American  girl  abroad,  unconscious  of  the  conven- 
tionalities of  civilization,  the  terror  of  the  British  matron 
with  grown-up  sons  and  daughters  at  the  continental  so- 
journs, the  wonder  of  the  clumsily  dressed  British  daught- 
ers, and  the  sport  of  the  British  fast  sons,  whom  she  floors 
at  last  by  the  impregnability  of  her  unconscious  innocence. 
The  growth  of  population  and  of  cities  induces  the  social 
conditions  in  America  which  have  made  chaperonage 
the  rule  in  Europe.  Unless  America  is  to  revolutionize 
society,  that  which  propriety  and  necesssity  have  erected 
in  Europe,  is  what  our  society  must  come  to.  If  society 
is  to  be  as  it  always  was,  it  is  obvious  that  the  free  running 
together  of  young  people  of  both  sexes  in  the  primitive 
American  way  can  not  continue  in  the  altered  conditions 
of  large  towns,  and  in  the  corruptness  of  a  higher  civiliza- 
tion. The  youngness  of  our  country  is  surprisingly  illus- 
trated in  that  the  greater  number  of  the  mothers  of  the 
grown  up  daughters  in  that  which  calls  itself  society,  grew 

350 


THE  CHAPERON  QUESTION".  257 

up  in  primitive  circumstances,  in  wliich  cliaperonage  was 
not  known. 

As  the  mothers  had  it  not.  and  knew  not  the  need  in 
their  own  girlhood,  they  feel  reluctant  to  recognize  the 
need  to  their  daughters,  and  to  put  them  under  restraint 
from  which  their  mothers  were  free.  Therefore  a  genera- 
tion or  two  may  pass  before  the  establishment  of  the  fash- 
ion of  chaperonage,  even  after  the  matrons  of  society  have 
become  convinced  of  its  propriety  and  need.  So  lacking  is 
the  courage  of  this  conviction  that  a  number  of  matrons 
in  a  large  city  proposed  to  brace  up  themselves  to  the  en- 
forcement, and  to  establish  the  fashion,  by  forming  an  as- 
sociation, pledging  each  member  to  the  practice  and  to  the 
exclusion  of  young  women  from  their  set,  who  were  not 
under  this  regulation. 

Human  nature  is  the  same  everywhere,  and  the  tend- 
ency of  the  growth  of  all  civilization  is  to  the  same  condi- 
tions and  character.  Chaperonage  is  the  natural  growth 
of  society,  and  is  as  proper  and  necessary  in  the  larger 
towns  of  America  as  in  Europe,  so  long  as  American  soci- 
ety is  merely  a  reproduction  of  the  "effete  civilization"  of 
Europe.  But  is  the  society  of  free  America  to  be  merely 
a  reproduction  of  that  of  the  "effete  despotisms"?  Is  that 
to  be  the  lame  and  impotent  outcome  of  the  grand  oppor- 
tunity which  the  New  World  opened  to  the  working  out  of 
the  social  problem  upon  original  principles?  The  Ameri- 
can female  mind  looks  for  better  things.  It  has  a  grand 
prospect  of  woman's  emancipation  from  all  the  things  of 
the  old  bondage;  a  prospect  of  freedom  and  all  which  that 
implies;  of  social,  economical,  civil  and  political  equality 
with  man. 

Freedom  is  the  indispensable  qualification  of  the  elective 
franchise.      Is  that  equality  which   holds  woman  under 
surveillance  and  leaves  man  free?    She  that  has  to  be 
17 


258  THE   CHAPEHOX   QUESTIOX. 

guarded  by  another  in  all  her  goings  has  not  political  free- 
dom, and  is  disqualified  for  it.  Protection  to  her,  which 
is  not  to  the  man,  would  not  be  equality.  Chaperonage 
and  suffrage  are  no  more  compatible  than  woman's  political 
equality  and  the  subjection  of  the  state  of  marriage.  The 
chaperon  question  grasps  and  grips  the  whole  question  of 
woman's  rights. 

Political  riglits  confer  political  duties  which  may  not 
be  left  off.  Government  by  the  people  requires  that  the 
people  shall  attend  to  the  duties  of  governing.  Popular 
government  by  the  elective  franchise  is  something  more 
than  to  drop  a  ballot  into  a  box,  like  the  dropping  of  a 
nickel  into  the  contribntion  plate  to  send  the  gosjDcl  to  the 
heathen.  To  neglect  the  duties  of  government  till  that 
time,  and  to  limit  them  to  that  feeble  act,  is  to  abandon 
government  to  the  possession  of  the  political  banditti,  and 
to  abjectly  ratify  their  robbery.  The  real  governing  work 
has  to  be  done  before  the  balloting,  in  discussion  and  agita- 
tion to  form  popular  opinion  and  shape  political  action  in 
the  primary  caucuses  and  in  the  conventions.  They  that 
stand  aloof  from  this  duty  are  not  of  the  governing  people. 
They  are  the  governed,  and  might  better  be  under  a  here- 
ditary absolutism,  which  at  the  worst  would  be  respectable. 
To  give  woman  the  ballot,  while  holding  to  customs  which 
keep  her  from  the  political  activities  which  make  the  bal- 
lot a  reality,  would  only  be  another  instrument  for  her 
oppression. 

Could  she  who  can  not  move  without  the  guardianship 
of  a  chaperon,  or  the  protection  of  father  or  brother,  take 
any  real  part  in  these  duties  of  government  by  the  people? 
The  presence  of  her  surveillance  would  prevent  her  having 
the  standing  and  influence  of  a  free  person  in  political 
canvassing,  in  popular  assemblages,  and  in  conventions. 
Even  her  coming  to  the  poll  to  vote,  under  protection. 


THE  CHAPEROK  QUESTION.  269 

would  be  scoffed  at  by  our  popular  rulers  as  a  vote  under 
subjection.  As  to  all  tlie  alTairs  of  seeking  nomination, 
electioneering,  and  holding  office,  woman  would  be  practi- 
cally disabled  by  the  handicap  of  chaperonage.  A  woman 
with  a  chaperon  would  be  as  unlikely  to  be  elected  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States,  as  a  woman  with  a  husband. 

Alike  fettered  would  she  be  in  the  professions,  in  trade, 
in  the  fierce  struggle  of  the  stock  and  produce  exchanges, 
in  commanding  ships  and  steamboats,  in  the  fine  and  me- 
chanic arts  and  industries,  in  railroad  and  hotel  employ- 
ments, in  the  post  office  and  carrier  service,  in  driving  and 
conducting  the  horse  cars  and  buses,  in  laborer-idling, 
agitating,  striking,  boycotting,  rioting  and  dynamiting. 
In  every  line  of  human  activity  and  in  every  pursuit  of  her 
rightful  equality,  woman  would  be  as  badly  fettered  by 
chaperonage  as  she  is  by  petticoats  and  a  train  of  skirts. 

To  say  that  marriage  frees  her  from  chaperonage,  and 
that  she  can  make  all  right  by  simply  getting  married,  is 
to  mock  her  right  to  equality  by  making  the  acquisition  of 
it  depend  on  the  free  grace  of  man,  and  by  subjecting  her 
to  a  requirement  from  which  man  is  exempt,  and  by  putting 
another  and  a  heavier  shackle  on  her  freedom.  At  the  best, 
the  social  custom  which  frees  the  married  young  woman 
from  the  restraints  imposed  on  the  unmarried  young 
woman,  will  not  bear  philosophical  investigation.  But  a 
rule  which  puts  on  the  unmarried  woman  a  restriction 
which  is  practically  a  political  disability,  and  which  has 
no  way  of  removing  it  save  by  putting  on  a  marriage  con- 
dition which  is  a  still  greater  clog  to  woman  in  a  political 
or  professional  career,  leaves  no  chance  whatever  for  a 
Avoman's  equal  rights,  and  puts  an  end  to  all  her  high 
aspirations.  The  mind's  eye  can  discern  a  prospective  ele- 
vation of  woman  to  high  careers  in  a  condition  of  independ, 
ent  singlehood  which  will  have  its  perfect  work  in  her  re- 


il60  THE   CHAPEROK  QUESTIOK. 

fusing  to  encumber  her  ambition  by  liitchiug  it  to  a  clog  of 
a  husband. 

The  natural  tendency  of  human  nature  to  promote  dis- 
tinctions in  society  —  a  tendency  even  more  marked  in 
woman's  nature  —  has  kept  the  consideration  of  the  chap- 
eron question  to  the  narrow  field  of  fasliionable  society, 
and  of  course,  it  regards  this  as  servilely  following  the  fash- 
ions of  the  ' '  effete  civilization  "  of  Europe.  But  this  view 
would  create  a  distinction  between  the  customs  of  what 
calls  itself  society  and  the  customs  of  the  peoj)le.  It  would 
draw  the  line  of  caste.  It  would  separate  fasliionable  soci- 
ety from  polical  duty,  and  put  an  indignity  on  the  women 
of  our  country.  Such  a  view  is  too  narrow  for  this  broad 
continent,  and  is  incompatible  with  woman's  equality. 

Chaperonuge  is  therefore  an  exotic  which  can  never 
take  root  in  American  soil.  Cliaperonage  and  woman 
suffrage  are  as  incompatible  as  woman's  marriage  and  free- 
dom. The  American  woman  is  bound  to  be  free,  with  all 
that  is  implied  by  freedom.  She  will  strike  from  her  mind 
and  members  all  that  fetters  her  pursuit  of  a  high  career 
in  whatever  line  of  life  she  may  choose.  She  will  not  con- 
sent to  hold  her  movements  under  the  cliaperonage  of  an- 
other woman,  nor  submit  to  take  on  the  clog  of  a  husband 
as  the  only  way  to  free  her  from  the  protection  of  women. 


LVI. 

WOMAN'S  UNTRUTHFULNESS. 

AN  eminent  English  barrister  and  an  eminent  English 
judge  have  lately  made  sweeping  declarations,  from 
their  judicial  observation,  to  the  effect  that  women  are  better 
liars  than  men.  Said  the  barrister  "a,  woman  will  swear 
to  anything."  And  Judge  Baron  Iluddleston  said  it  was 
impossible  for  him  **to  gauge  the  credibility  of  a  female 
witness."  Man  may  concede  equal  capabilities  to  women, 
but  the  dignity  of  manhood  should  be  guarded  against 
conceding  any  superiority.  Lawyers  are  so  in  the  habit 
of  discrediting  the  witnesses  on  the  other  side,  without 
distinction  of  sex,  age,  or  previous  condition,  that  their 
soft  impeachment  of  women  in  general  may  be  largely 
from  the  force  of  professional  habit. 

Judges  find  difficulty  in  gauging  the  credibility  of  wit- 
nesses in  many  cases.  They  gauge  them  by  the  counte- 
nances, manner,  consistency  and  probability,  and  they  also 
take  previous  character  into  the  account.  To  say  that  out 
of  their  own  discernment  they  can  gauge  the  credibility 
of  a  male  witness,  but  that  this  fails  before  a  female,  is  to 
attribute  to  her  a  fineness  in  the  art  of  lying  which  would 
be  highly  flattering  to  her  intellect.  Indeed  it  is  the  same 
as  for  Baron  Huddleston  to  say  that  he  can  see  through  a 
male  witness  but  a  woman  beats  him.  This  is  an  elliptic 
compliment  to  woman. 

But  is  it  not  true  that  men  wear  truthfulness  very 
loosely  ?  He  whose  word  is  as  his  bond  is  the  ideal  man. 
Our  courts  have  a  dreadful  oath,  backed  by  divine  wrath 
and  the  penalties  of  perjury,  to  keep  witnesses  from  lying. 

261 


262  woman's  untruthfulness. 

Yet  the  lawyers  on  each  side  suspect  the  witnesses  of  the 
other  side. 

Does  the  lawyer  stick  to  the  truth?  He  makes  lying 
professional.  The  bigger  half  of  his  trade  is  in  making 
the  worse  appear  the  better  cause,  tlic  false  the  true,  and 
in  perverting  and  defeating  justice.  Woman  can  have  it 
out  with  him  by  the  "  you're-another  "  argument.  What  are 
all  the  judicial  oaths  and  the  penalties  for  perjury  but  an 
assumption  that  man  is  by  nature  a  liar?  Is  not  lying  the 
common  medium  of  commerce?  Who  buys  a  horse  witli- 
out  losing  faith  in  man?  Can  the  physician  live  without 
the  practice  of  quackery?  Could  the  trader  sell  if  he  told 
the  truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth  of  his  wares?  Where 
is  the  newspaper  editor  who  always  tells  the  truth  of  his 
own  business  and  of  that  of  the  contemporary  over  the 
way;  of  his  own  party  and  the  other?  Does  the  preacher 
address  his  reproof  to  the  special  sins  of  his  paying  mem- 
bers? What  is  the  very  respectable  business  of  stock  spec- 
ulating but  gambling  with  loaded  dice  and  stocked  cards? 
Is  not  what  we  call  the  genuineness  of  all  our  articles  of 
food,  our  milk,  bread,  flour,  sugar,  coffee,  and  the  whole 
line  of  what  we  call  groceries,  and  also  of  our  medicines, 
merely  relative,  all  having  some  mixture  of  fraud?  Is  upt 
our  political  campaigning  chiefly  lying,  at  least  in  one 
party? 

Man  is  in  no  state  to  throw  stones  at  woman  for  con- 
necting the  truth  to  a  thing  of  convenience.  But  while 
his  lying  is  mostly  mercenary,  that  of  woman  is  to  make 
life  smooth  and  agreeable.  Amiability,  friendship,  love, 
charity  towards  faults,  the  desire  to  make  others  happy, 
and  to  beflower  the  way  of  life  —  all  the  most  lovely  virtues 
— lead  woman  to  avoid  the  habitual  use  of  the  truth.  In 
social  intercourse,  truth  is  a  harsh  virtue,  so  unpleasant  as 
to  be  a  vice.     The  evil  minded  pretend  for  their  vicious 


WOMA^^'S   UXTllUTHFULNESS.  203 

speech  the  virtue  of  truth.  Every  social  circle  lias  speci- 
mens of  these  Satanic  persons  who  exercise  a  malicious  dis- 
position under  pretense  of  rugged  candor.  Woman  avoids 
the  disagreeable  quality  of  truthfulness  because  she  has 
more  than  man  of  the  amiable  virtues,  that  lubricate  social 
intercourse. 

Untruthfulness  is  the  pleasing  quality  in  society.  The 
usual  language  of  compliment  pays  no  heed  to  truth.  Tiic 
expressions  of  joy  at  meeting  and  of  pain  at  parting  are 
all  exaggerated,  and  sometimes  downright  lies.  To  lie 
effusively  in  welcoming  a  visitor  Avhom  you  wish  in  Guinea, 
and  in  pressing  peoiDle  to  come  whom  you  would  be  glad 
never  to  see,  is  politeness.  Could  society  exist  without  this 
practice  of  reciprocal  falsehood  ?  And  as  society  is  run 
mostly  by  woman,  shall  we  disparage  her  for  that  which 
makes  society  possible  ? 

Although  Baron  Huddleston  is  unable  to  gauge  the 
credibility  of  a  female  witness,  the  blessing  on  social  inter- 
course by  woman's  untruthfulness  may  be  gauged  by 
fancying  what  would  be  if  woman  were  addicted  to  truth- 
fulness and  candor. 

Suppose  that  she  were  to  say  to  her  dear  friends  what 
she  thinks  of  them.  Suppose  she  should  say  to  their  faces 
the  opinion  of  their  characters  and  doings  which  she  gives 
behind  their  backs.  What  a  sweet  world  it  would  be! 
That  is  indeed  a  high  virtue  in  women  which  reserves  their 
true  opinions  of  one  another  for  the  confidential  com- 
munication which  expedites  currency  without  giving 
offense.  This  keeping  of  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil 
of  one  another  in  an  under-current,  leaves  the  surface 
smooth,  and  makes  society  possible  without  suppressing 
freedom  of  opinion  and  speech.  Nor  would  the  common 
politeness  of  social  intercourse  he  possible  under  tlie 
restraint  of  truth.     It  would  be  quickly  extinguished  by 


364  woman's  untruthfulness. 

the  expression  of  the  real  feeling  instead  of  the  superlative 
joy  and  regret  at  meeting  and  parting,  and  of  the  real 
sentiment  instead  of  the  customary  language  of  compliment 
and  flattery.  Thus  is  woman's  untruthfulness  the  language 
of  politeness,  the  medium  of  social  intercourse,  and  the 
engine  of  civilization. 

Suppose  that  the  wife,  after  the  eating  of  the  fruit  of 
the  marriage-tree  of  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  has 
opened  her  eyes  to  the  realization  that  the  man  whom  her 
blind  love  had  deified,  is  a  being  whose  little  intellectual 
part  is  stunted  by  his  large  animal  preponderance,  were  to 
speak  out  the  truth  that  is  within  her,  and  were  to 
tell  him  of  her  disenchantment,  and  that  he  is  so  different 
from  the  being  she  supposed  when  she  promised  to  love, 
honor  and  obey,  that  the  promise  has  lapsed  in  the  lack  of 
personal  identity;  suppose  she  were  to  let  out  this  truth, 
instead  of  burying  it  in  her  breast  and  keeping  .up  the 
forms  of  love  and  devotion;  would  such  truth  be  a  virtue? 
It  would  be  a  demon  to  disrupt  the  holy  marriage  tie. 
The  devil  would  revel  in  such  truthfulness.  Is  not  the 
resignation  that  conceals  this  disappointment  like  a  worm 
in  the  bud,  and  fulfills  all  the  duties  of  loving  wife,  a  far 
higher  virtue?  And  as  man  is  the  one  that  thus  sobers 
her  life  and  makes  her  live  a  lie,  surely  he  can  not  taunt 
her  with  that  resigned  acceptance  of  the  situation  which 
pads  the  conjugal  yoke. 

And  woman  has  had  no  fair  chances.  She  has  been 
slowly  rising  from  the  lowest  slavery,  and  is  yet  but  partly 
emancipated.  Still  the  law  of  most  civilized  countries 
makes  the  married  couple  one,  and  that  one  the  man.  In 
uncivilized  countries  the  woman  has  no  rights  that  man  is 
bound  to  respect.  Slavery  always  debases  morality.  The 
^ime  since  woman  has  been  known  to  the  law  as  more  than 
a  chattel  is  short  compared  with  the  time  it  has  taken  to 


woman's  untruthfulness.  265 

evolve  man  from  monkey,  or  even  to  lift  him  from  a  savage, 
clothed  with  skins,  to  a  democratic  sovereign.  It  is  com- 
paratively a  short  time  since  woman  acquired  a  soul,  and 
in  all  the  world  the  majority  of  women  have  not  yet  received 
it.  "Without  a  soul,  how  can  she  have  a  sense  of  moral  ac- 
countability? Thus  whatever  there  be  in  her  that  is  not 
perfect  she  can  fairly  charge  upon  man. 


LVII. 

WILL  THE  COMING  WOMAN  MARRY? 

PA.KALLEL  with  the  lament  of  the  degeneracy  of  the 
age,  which  affords  enjoyment  and  a  sense  of  moral 
superiority  to  a  large  part  of  mankind,  runs  an  equally 
rational  talk  of  the  continuing  elevation  of  the  human 
race,  and  this  indulges  in  speculation  on  what  the  coming 
man  will  be,  and  what  the  coming  woman.  The  expecta- 
tion of  change  is  greatest  in  the  woman,  who  now,  for  the 
first  time  since  she  was  ribbed,  is  to  have  breathed  into  her 
the  breath  of  life  by  freedom  and  equality. 

Will  the  coming  woman  marry?  For  what?  For  pro- 
tection and  support?  That  would  continue  the  old  relation 
of  weakness  and  dependence — the  old  oak  and  ivy-twining 
relation.  The  property  of  freedom  and  equality  is  inde- 
pendence, self-defense  and  self-support.  If  she  must  con- 
tinue to  marry  for  man's  protection  and  support,  she  will 
continue  the  reality  of  servitude,  whatever  may  be  her  lib- 
erty and  equality  before  the  law. 

For  love?  Bind  herself  in  bonds  to  a  man  for  love  of 
him?  Love  makes  her  defenseless,  helpless  and  dependent 
on  the  man.  And  the  indissoluble  bond  of  marriage  ends 
her  freedom.  If  she  is  to  require  man  to  complete  her 
being  and  outfit  her  for  life,  her  sexual  nature  will  keep 
her  in  subjection  in  the  face  of  all  freedom  and  equality  by 
legislative  act. 

The  reply  ^.hat  man  needs  woman  to  complete  his  being, 
his  living,  his  comfort,  his  happiness  and  the  rest,  and, 
therefore,  that  the  need  of  each  of  the  other  puts  them  on 
an  equality  and  makes  it  an  even  trade,  does  not  answer. 

266 


WILL   THE   COMING    WOMAN   MARRY?  267 

Judgiug  by  observation  of  man,  he  does  not  need  woman  to 
complete  his  being  in  any  such  sense  as  she  needs  him. 
The  ways  of  the  world  are  all  open  to  him — war,  statesman- 
ship, the  professions,  trade,  adventure,  without  marrying. 
In  the  old  relation  of  the  sexes  the  poet  says  truly:  "  Man's 
love  is  of  man's  life  a  thing  apart; 'tis  woman's  whole  exis- 
tence." 

And  when  man  does  love  and  does  marry  it  seems  not 
to  absorb  his  being  as  it  does  woman's.  Sacred  history 
shows  that  man  is  capable  of  adapting  himself  to  polygamy, 
if,  indeed,  this  be  not  his  natural  state.  But  woman 
has  not  that  capability  for  plurality  of  love,  or,  at 
least,  she  has  not  demonstrated  the  practicability  of  it. 
This  makes  a  radical  difference  in  the  sexes.  If  this  is 
to  continue  in  the  coming  woman,  then  she  will  be  likely 
to  become  whatever  the  law  may  provide. 

In  the  sacred  history  of  the  creation,  man  was  created 
a  complete  being.  But  woman  was  an  addendum,  and  was 
not  created  a  complete  being.  True,  the  advanced  female 
thinkers  kick  against  the  account  of  the  creation  of  woman 
as  an  "afterthought"  and  against  the  Almighty  fiat  that 
he  shall  rule  over  her,  and  well  they  may;  but  to  kick 
against  the  words  is  foolish  if  in  all  their  advanced  think- 
ing and  freedom  and  equality  they  must  abide  by  the  same 
feminine  nature  which  makes  man  essential  to  complete 
their  being. 

Must  the  coming  woman  marry  for  children  ?  Why 
should  she  want  to  be  a  breeder  of  sinners  ? — as  the  ele- 
gant Prince  of  Denmark  asked  his  lady-love.  Why  should 
she  put  this  poke  on  her  career  ?  Why  bind  her  life  to  the 
multiplying  the  species,  which  is  always  over-multiplied  ? 
Why  consign  her  existence  to  the  giving  of  existence  to 
others,  and  to  the  mind-dwarfing  toil  of  raising  them  ? 
Why  keep  her  intellect  going  back  periodically  to  the  state 
of  infancy  to  bring  forward  the  minds  of  infants  ? 


268  WILL  THE  COMING  WOMAN  MARRY? 

Maternity  binds  her  to  a  state  of  servitude.  Man  puts 
no  such  fetter  on  his  career.  Can  that  be  called  freedom 
and  equality,  in  which  woman  is  confined  to  the  breeding 
of  the  young  ones,  and  man,  unencumbered,  has  all  the 
ways  to  culture,  fame  and  power  open  to  him  ?  In  mater- 
nity and  paternity  are  no  equality.  Paternity  is  of  man's 
life  a  thing  apart.  See  the  complacent  lord  of  the  bovine 
herd  without  a  care.  Maternity  is  woman's  whole  exist- 
ence. See  the  herd  of  cows,  each  devoting  her  whole  ex- 
istence to  one  calf. 

Shall  it  be  answered  that  women  needs  maternity  to 
develop  her  womanly  nature?  This  answer  argues  her 
inequality  and  subjection.  For  man  needs  not  paternity 
to  develop  his  manly  nature.  What  is  the  maternal 
nature?  Is  it  not  a  nature  which,  instead  ef  shaping  her 
for  a  career  of  equality  with  man,  tethers  her  to  a  relation 
of  subjection?  The  wide  equality  of  paternity  and  mater- 
nity in  limiting  a  career,  and  in  fixing  a  woman.s,  puts  free- 
dom and  equality  out  of  the  case  if  the  time-honored 
maternity  business  is  to  continue. 

Woman  is  now  under  no  command  to  increase  and 
multiply  and  replenish  the  earth.  She  owes  no  duty  of 
maternity  to  the  world.  If  it  be  argued  that  her  own 
nature  needs  it,  this  assertion  of  a  peculiar  nature  puts 
equality  and  independence  out  of  the  matter.  If  the 
future  of  woman  is  to  continue  the  maternity  bondage  she 
will  be  the  same  subject  woman  as  she  that  came  sideways 
to  Adam  in  his  sleep. 

Maternity  is  beautiful  but  not  intellectual.  Woman 
shares  this  instinct  with  all  other  animals.  Their  affection 
for  their  young  is  the  same  as  hers.  The  timidest  creatures 
will  fight  for  them.  Even  the  timid  goose  is  frightful  to 
the  passing  boy  when  her  goslings  are  about.  If  mother- 
hood were  elevating,  it  would  have  lifted  ud  all  creatures. 


WILL  THE  COMING  WOMAK"  MARRY?  209 

It  is  not  culture.  It  works  no  such  expansion  of  the  mind 
as  pottery,  wood-scratching,  bric-^-brac,  decorative  stitch- 
ing, worsted  and  such  elegant  arts,  nor  as  the  study  of 
other  languages  and  sciences. 

It  brings  down  the  Vassar  girl  to  the  life  of  the  hum- 
blest of  her  sex.  It  turns  her  mind  from  the  expanding 
thoughts  of  Greek,  Latin,  the  higher  mathematics,  and 
the  physical  sciences,  to  a  one-sided  introspection.  It  turns 
scholarship  and  elegant  culture  to  naught,  by  an  over- 
whelming touch  of  nature  which  levels  all  women  to  the 
common  instinct,  and  proves  all  female  creatures  akin. 

Motherhood  is  beautiful,  and  a  babe  in  the  house  is  a 
wellspring  of  joy.  But  this  dwarfs  the  mind.  At  each 
advent  the  mother's  mind  goes  back  to  begin  anew  with  the 
infant's.  She  loses  articulate  speech  and  jabbers  gibberish, 
to  begin  with  its  inarticulate  language.  What  an  intel- 
lectual tumble  for  a  Vassar  graduate!  A  young  one  in  the 
family  gathers  to  its  inanities  the  mind  of  all  the  company, 
and  the,  visitors  go  away  with  a  sense  of  sinking  to  intel- 
lectual vacuity.  All  this  is  lovely,  and  does  well  enough 
for  the  present  domestic  state  of  woman;  but  it  is  not  for 
the  emancipated,  elevated,  intellectual  woman  that  is  to 
come.  She  is  not  to  serve  as  a  domestic  wellspring  of  joy, 
but  as  an  intellectual  terror. 

Furthermore,  the  glittering  but  humbling  assertion 
that  woman  needs  maternity  for  her  full  being,  is  denied 
by  her  own  practice.  As  she  rises  in  condition,  fashion 
and  culture,  her  eyes  are  opened,  and  she  finds  she  is  better 
without.  Our  most  intelligent  women — that  is  to  say  our 
most  fashionable — are  casting  off  the  old-fashioned  bond- 
age. Woman  must  be  allowed  to  know  herself.  She  shows 
that  when  she  has  the  higher  mental  occupation  of  dress, 
fashionable  society,  female  lunch  parties,  and  summer 
resorts,  she  does  not  need  maternity  or  the  fullness  of  her 
beine:. 


270  WILL  the:  coming  woman  marry? 

Must  the  coming  woman  marry  to  take  away  the  re- 
proach of  maidliood  ?  Then  she  must  be  as  meek  and  as 
subject  to  man  as  the  woman  that  is  come.  If  it  is  a 
reproach  it  is  because  of  woman's  inferiority.  In  a  state  of 
equality  singleness  would  be  no  more  a  reproach  to  woman 
than  to  man.  Alike  it  would  leave  the  career  free  of  im- 
pediment. But  if  the  coming  woman  is  to  have  the  same 
fear  of  keeping  her  maidliood,  she  will  be  as  subject  to 
man  as  now,  and  equality  laws  will  fail  to  make  her  equal. 

Bachelorhood  is  no  reproach.  It  makes  him  more 
valued.  Shall  not  the  coming  woman  lift  maidhood  to  a 
higher  dignity  than  marriage?  Only  in  the  state  of  single- 
tude  can  woman  be  entirely  herself  —  be  all  in  herself  —  be 
truly  great  in  herself  —  be  free  in  a  career  for  herself. 
When  she  has  risen  to  the  height  of  such  a  state  of  being, 
maidhood  will  be  the  higher  state,  and  marriage  a  neces- 
sity which  accepts  a  lower  condition. 

The  degree  of  LL.  B — Legum  Baccalaureus,  Bachelor  of 
Laws — has  been  conferred  by  Yale  College  on  Miss  Jor- 
dan. Why  not  Maid  of  Laws  ?  Why  shall  not  this  female 
title  of  singleness,  the  same  as  the  male,  continue  without 
regard  to  condition,  as  with  that  *'  Maid  of  Athens  "  who 
would  not  give  back  the  heart  ?  Why  is  it  not  as  honor- 
able ?  But  in  the  various  suggestions  to  get  around  the 
awkwardness  of  giving,  the  title  of  Bachelor  to  a  maid,  no 
woman  has  proposed  that  it  shall  be  '^  Maid  of  Laws.'' 

All  this  is  a  recognition  of  the  old  condition  which 
makes  maidhood  a  reproach !  Shall  not  the  coming  woman 
remove  this?  For  what  shall  she  marry?  Is  there  any 
object  that  does  not  concede  dependence,  inferiority,  sub- 
jection, servitude,  and  that  does  not  let  her  down  from  a 
high  estate  and  from  the  possibilities  of  a  great  career? 

In  this  high  view  of  the  great  principles  that  govern 
the  coming  woman's  destiny,  it  is  not  necessary  to  descend 


WILL  THE  COMINCt  WOMAK  MARRY?  271 

to  particulars  to  point  out  that  the  being  yoked  to  a  man 
Avoukl  be  a  liincl ranee  in  any  public  career,  and  in  all  the 
higher  pursuits.  In  every  walk  of  life  she  would  have  to 
drag  this  clog,  and  the  inevitable  consequence  would  be 
that  both  would  be  limited  to  those  humble  vocations 
which  can  be  worked  in  the  yoke. 

The  conclusion  of  inflexible  logic  is,  that  if  the  coming 
woman  is  to  be  free,  equal,  independent,  and  to  have  open 
to  her  all  the  ways  to  a  great  career,  she  Avill  not  marry. 
As  to  posterity,  she  owes  it  nothing,  ^he  can  be  as  exalted 
above  that  as  the  Shakers.  Or  if  the  debt  to  posterity  is  to 
continue,  the  elevated  woman  can  relegate  it  to  the  lower 
order. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  the  coming  woman  shall  marry, 
she  will  be  about  the  same  manner  of  woman  as  she  that  is 
now  the  sweetener  of  the  cup  of  happiness;  and  the  talk 
and  laws  of  emancipation  and  equality  will  be  all  in  vain 
against  a  nature  which  makes  her  subject  to  man.  There- 
fore tire  abiding  faith  in  tlie  future  elevation  of  woman, 
and  that  the  taste  of  liberty  and  education  which  she  has 
now  got  will  work  in  her  a  great  transformation,  is  logic- 
ally obliged  to  believe  that  the  coming  woman  will  not 
marry. 


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